ffcVVif ':•;*  :;f  :;:«*v:;!Jpi'!V;: 


'U 


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THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 


PRESENTED  BY 

PROF.  CHARLES  A.  KOFOID  AND 
MRS.  PRUDENCE  W.  KOFOID 


AMERICAN  MEN   OF  MIND 


LONGFELLOW 


AMERICAN 
MEN    OF    MIND 


BY 

BURTON   E.   STEVENSON 

AUTHOR      OF    "A    GUIDE    TO    BIOGRAPHY — MEN    OF    ACTION,' 

"A  SOLDIER  OF  VIRGINIA,"  ETC.;  COMPILER  OF  "DAYS  AND 

DEEDS — POETRY,"  "DAYS  AND  DEEDS — PROSE,"  ETC. 


GARDEN  CITY    NEW  YORK 
DOUBLEDAY,  PAGE  &  COMPANY 


COPYBIQHT,    1910,    BY 

THE  BAKER  &  TAYLOE  COMPANY 


Published,  June,  1910 


ssi 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.— "MEN  OF  MIND" 11 

II. — WRITERS  OF  PROSE     .       .       .       .       .       •  ...„•  19 

Summary  to  Chapter  II 49 

III. — WRITERS  OF  VERSE     ........  54 

Summary  to  Chapter  III 80 

IV. — PAINTERS       .       ...       ,       .       .       .       .  85 
Summary  to  Chapter  IV       .        .        .        .        .120 

V. — SCULPTORS     .       . 125 

Summary  to  Chapter  V         .       .       .  .154 

VI.— THE  STAGE    ., 157 

Summary  to  Chapter  VI 182 

VII. — SCIENTISTS  AND  EDUCATORS 186 

Summary  to  Chapter  VII 224 

VIII. — PHILANTHROPISTS  AND  REFORMERS  .       .               .  231 

Summary  to  Chapter  VIII    .        ..      .       .       .  286 

IX. — MEN  OF  AFFAIRS         .       .       .       .       .       .       .291 

Summary  to  Chapter  IX 324 

X. — INVENTORS 327 

Summary  to  Chapter  X        .        .        .     "...  371 


M367890 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 


FACING 
PAGE 


Longfellow  .......         Frontispiece 

Hawthorne 28 

Emerson .       .        .        ."'    .  44 

Greeley 48 

Stuart 92 

Booth 158 

Agassiz 190 

Eliot     .                               216 

Girard 232 

Beecher 252 

Wanamaker 314 

Morse           .       .  336 


AMERICAN  MEN   OF   MIND 


AMERICAN  MEN  OF  MIND 


CHAPTER   I 
"MEN  OF  MIND" 

T  .N"  the  companion  volume  of  this  series,  "  Men  of 
*  Action,"  the  attempt  was  made  to  give  the  es 
sential  facts  of  American  history  by  sketching  in 
broad  outline  the  men  who  made  that  history — the 
discoverers,  pioneers,  presidents,  statesmen,  soldiers, 
and  sailors — and  describing  the  part  which  each  of 
them  played. 

It  was  almost  like  watching  a  great  building  grow 
under  the  hands  of  the  workmen,  this  one  adding  a 
stone  and  that  one  adding  another;  but  there  was 
one  great  difference.  For  a  building,  the  plans  are 
made  carefully  beforehand,  worked  out  to  the  small 
est  detail,  and  followed  to  the  letter,  so  that  every 
stone  goes  exactly  where  it  belongs,  and  the  work  of 
all  the  men  fits  together  into  a  complete  and  perfect 
whole.  But  when  America  was  started,  no  one  had 
more  than  the  vaguest  idea  of  what  the  finished 
result  was  to  be;  indeed,  many  questioned  whether 
any  enduring  structure  could  be  reared  on  a  founda 
tion  such  as  ours.  So  there  was  much  useless  labor, 
one  workman  tearing  down  what  another  had  built, 

11 


A  Guide  to  Biography 

and  only  a  few  of  them  working  with  any  clear  vision, 
of  the  future. 

The  convention  which  adopted  the  Constitution  of 
the  United  States  may  fairly  be  said  to  have  fur 
nished  the  first  plan,  and  George  Washington  was  the 
master-builder  who  laid  the  foundations  in  accord 
ance  with  it.  He  did  more  than  that,  for  the  plan 
was  only  a  mere  outline;  so  Washington  added  such 
details  as  he  found  necessary,  taking  care  always  that 
they  accorded  with  the  plan  of  the  founders.  He 
lived  long  enough  to  see  the  building  complete  in 
all  essential  details,  and  to  be  assured  that  the  foun 
dation  was  a  firm  one  and  that  the  structure,  which 
is  called  a  Republic,  would  endure. 

All  that  has  been  done  since  his  time  has  been  to 
build  on  an  addition  now  and  then,  as  need  arose,  and 
to  change  the  ornamentation  to  suit  the  taste  of  the 
day.  At  one  time,  it  seemed  that  the  whole  struc 
ture  might  be  rent  asunder  and  topple  into  ruins; 
but  again  there  came  a  master-builder  named  Abra 
ham  Lincoln,  and  with  the  aid  of  a  million  devoted 
workmen  who  rallied  to  his  call,  he  saved  it. 

There  have  been  men,  and  there  are  men  to-day, 
who  would  attack  the  foundation  were  they  per 
mitted;  but  never  yet  have  they  got  within  effective 
striking  distance.  Others  there  are  who  have  marred 
the  simple  and  classic  beauty  of  the  building  with 
strange  excrescences.  But  these  are  only  temporary, 
and  the  hand  of  time  will  sweep  them  all  away.  For 
the  work  of  tearing  down  and  building  up  is  going 
forward  to-day  just  as  it  has  always  done;  and  the 

12 


"Men  of  Mind" 

changes  are  sometimes  for  the  better  and  sometimes 
for  the  worse;  but,  on  the  whole,  the  building  grows 
more  stately  and  more  beautiful  as  the  generations 
pass. 

It  was  the  work  of  the  principal  laborers  on  this 
mighty  edifice  which  we  attempted  to  judge  in  "  Men 
of  Action,"  and  this  was  a  comparatively  easy  task, 
because  the  work  stands  out  concretely  for  all  to  see, 
and,  as  far  as  essentials  go,  at  least,  we  are  all  agreed 
as  to  what  is  good  work  and  what  is  bad.  But  the 
task  which  is  attempted  in  the  present  volume  is  a 
much  more  difficult  one,  for  here  we  are  called  upon 
to  judge  not  deeds  but  thoughts — thoughts,  that  is, 
as  translated  into  a  novel,  or  a  poem,  or  a  statue,  or 
a  painting,  or  a  theory  of  the  universe. 

]STobody  has  ever  yet  been  able  to  devise  a  uni 
versal  scale  by  which  thoughts  may  be  measured,  nor 
any  acid  test  to  distinguish  gold  from  dross  in  art 
and  literature.  So  each  person  has  to  devise  a  scale 
of  his  own  and  do  his  measuring  for  himself;  he  has 
to  apply  to  the  things  he  sees  and  reads  the  acid  test 
of  his  own  intellect.  And  however  imperfect  this 
measuring  and  testing  may  be,  it  is  the  only  sort 
which  has  any  value  for  that  particular  person.  In 
other  words,  unless  you  yourself  find  a  poem  or  a 
painting  great,  it  isn't  great  for  you,  however  critics 
may  extol  it.  So  all  the  books  about  art  and  lit 
erature  and  music  are  of  value  only  as  they  improve 
the  scale  and  perfect  the  acid  test  of  the  individual, 
so  that  the  former  measures  more  and  more  correctly, 
and  the  latter  bites  more  and  more  surely  through 

13 


A  Guide  to  Biography 

the  glittering  veneer  which  seeks  to  disguise  the  dross 
beneath. 

It  follows  from  all  this  that,  since  there  are  nearly 
as  many  scales  as  there  are  individuals,  very  few 
of  them  will  agree  exactly.  Time,  however,  has  a 
wonderful  way  of  testing  thoughts,  of  preserving 
those  that  are  worthy,  and  of  discarding  those  that 
are  unworthy.  Just  how  this  is  done  nobody  has 
ever  been  able  to  explain;  but  the  fact  remains  that, 
somehow,  a  really  great  poem  or  painting  or  statue 
or  theory  lives  on  from  age  to  age,  long  after  the 
other  products  of  its  time  have  been  forgotten.  And 
if  it  is  really  great,  the  older  it  grows,  the  greater 
it  seems.  Shakespeare,  to  his  contemporaries,  was 
merely  an  actor  and  playwright  like  any  one  of  a 
score  of  others;  but,  with  the  passing  of  years,  he  has 
become  the  most  wonderful  figure  in  the  world's  lit 
erature.  Rembrandt  could  scarcely  make  a  living 
with  his  brush,  industriously  as  he  used  it,  and 
passed  his  days  in  misery,  haunted  by  his  creditors 
and  neglected  by  the  public;  to-day  we  recognize  in 
him  one  of  the  greatest  artists  who  ever  lived.  Such 
instances  are  common  enough,  for  genius  often  goes 
unrecognized  until  its  possessor  is  dead;  just  as  many 
men  are  hailed  as  geniuses  by  their  contemporaries, 
and  promptly  forgotten  by  the  succeeding  genera 
tion.  The  touchstone  of  time  infallibly  separates  the 
false  and  the  true. 

Unfortunately,  to  American  literature  and  art  no 
such  test  can  be  applied,  for  they  are  less  than  a 
century  old — scarcely  out  of  swaddling  clothes.  The 

14 


"Men  of  Mind" 

greater  portion  of  the  product  of  our  early  years  has 
long  since  been  forgotten;  but  whether  any  of  that 
which  remains  is  really  immortal  will  take  another 
century  or  two  to  determine.  So  the  only  tests  we 
can  apply  at  present  are  those  of  taste  and  judgment, 
and  these  are  anything  but  infallible. 

Especially  is  this  true  of  literature.  Somebody 
announced,  not  long  ago,  that  "  the  foremost  poet  of 
a  nation  is  that  poet  most  widely  read  and  truly  loved 
by  it,"  and  added  that,  in  this  respect,  Longfellow 
was  easily  first  in  America.  I^o  doubt  many  people 
will  agree  with  this  dictum;  and,  indeed,  the  test  of 
popularity  is  difficult  to  disregard.  But  it  is  not  at 
all  a  true  test,  as  we  can  see  easily  enough  if  we 
attempt  to  apply  it  to  art,  or  to  music,  or  to  public 
affairs.  Popularity  is  no  more  a  test  of  genius  in 
a  poet  than  in  a  statesman,  and  when  we  remember 
how  far  astray  the  popular  will  has  sometimes  led 
us  in  regard  to  politics,  we  may  be  inclined  to  regard 
with  suspicion  its  judgments  in  regard  to  literature. 

The  test  of  merit  in  literature  is  not  so  much  wide 
appeal  as  intelligent  appeal;  the  literature  which 
satisfies  the  taste  and  judgment  of  cultured  people 
is  pretty  certain  to  rank  higher  than  that  which  is 
current  among  the  uncultured.  And  so  with  art. 
Consequently,  for  want  of  something  better,  the  gen 
eral  verdict  of  cultured  people  upon  our  literature 
and  art  has  been  followed  in  these  pages. 

Two  or  three  other  classes  of  achievers  have  been 
grouped,  for  convenience,  in  this  volume — scientists 
and  educators,  philanthropists  and  reformers,  men 

15 


A  Guide  to  Biography 

of  affairs,  actors  and  inventors — and  it  may  be  truly 
argued  concerning  some  of  them  that  they  were 
more  "  men  of  action/7  and  less  "  men  of  mind " 
than  many  who  were  included  in  the  former  vol 
ume.  But  all  distinctions  and  divisions  and  classi 
fications  are  more  or  less  arbitrary;  and  there  is  no 
intention,  in  this  one,  to  intimate  that  the  "  men  of 
action  "  were  not  also  "  men  of  mind/7  or  vice  versa. 
The  division  has  been  made  simply  for  convenience. 

These  thumb-nail  sketches  are  in  no  sense  the 
result  of  original  research.  The  material  needed 
has  been  gathered  from  such  sources  as  are  avail 
able  in  any  well-equipped  public  library.  An  at 
tempt  has  been  made,  however,  to  color  the  narrative 
with  human  interest,  and  to  give  it  consecutiveness, 
though  this  has  sometimes  been  very  hard  to  do. 
But,  even  at  the  best,  this  is  only  a  first  book  in  the 
study  of  American  art  and  letters,  and  is  designed  to 
serve  only  as  a  stepping-stone  to  more  elaborate  and 
comprehensive  ones. 

There  are  several  short  histories  of  American  lit 
erature  which  will  prove  profitable  and  pleasant  read 
ing.  Mr.  W.  P.  Trent's  is  written  with  a  refresh 
ing  humor  and  insight.  The  "  American  Men  of 
Letters  "  series  gives  carefully  written  biographies 
of  about  twenty-five  of  our  most  famous  authors — 
all  that  anyone  need  know  about  in  detail.  There 
is  a  great  mass  of  other  material  on  the  shelves  of 
every  public  library,  which  will  take  one  as  far  as 
one  may  care  to  go. 

But  the  important  thing  in  literature  is  to  know 
16 


"Men  of  Mind" 

. 
the  man's  work  rather  than  his  life.     If  his  work  19 

sound  and  helpful  and  inspiring,  his  life  needn't 
bother  us,  however  hopeless  it  may  have  been.  The 
striking  example  of  this,  in  American  literature,  is 
Edgar  Allan  Poe,  whose  fame,  in  this  country,  is 
just  emerging  from  the  cloud  which  his  unfortunate- 
career  cast  over  it.  The  life  of  the  man  is  of  im 
portance  only  as  it  helps  you  to  understand  his  work. 
Most  important  of  all  is  to  create  within  yourself  a 
liking  for  good  books  and  a  power  of  telling  good 
from  bad.  This  is  one  of  the  most  important  things 
in  life,  indeed;  and  Mr.  John  Macy  points  the  way 
to  it  in  his  "  Child's  Guide  to  Beading." 

Only  second  to  the  power  to  appreciate  good  lit 
erature  is  the  power  to  appreciate  good  art.  For 
the  material  in  this  volume  the  author  is  indebted 
largely  to  the  excellent  monographs  by  Mr.  Samuel 
Isham  and  Mr.  Lorado  Taft  on  "  American  Paint 
ing,"  and  "  American  Sculpture."  There  are  many 
guides  to  the  study  of  art,  among  the  best  of  them: 
being  Mr.  Charles  G.  Caffin's  "  Child's  Guide  to  Pic 
tures,"  "  American  Masters  of  Painting,"  "  Amer 
ican  Masters  of  Sculpture,"  and  "  How  to  Study; 
Pictures  ";  Mr.  John  C.  VanDyke's  "  How  to  Judge 
of  a  Picture,"  and  "  The  Meaning  of  Pictures,"  and 
Mr.  John  LaFarge's  "  Great  Masters."  In  the  study 
of  art,  as  of  literature,  you  will  soon  find  that  Amer 
ica's  place  is  as  yet  comparatively  unimportant. 

For  the  chapter  on  "The  Stage,"  Mr.  William 
"Winter's  various  volumes  of  biography  and  criticism 
have  been  drawn  upon,  more  especially  with  refer- 

17 


A  Guide  to  Biography 

ence  to  the  actors  of  the  "  old  school,"  which  Mr. 
Winter  admires  so  deeply.  There  are  a  number  of 
books,  besides  these,  which  make  capital  reading — 
Clara  Morris's  "Life  on  the  Stage,"  Joseph  Jeffer 
son's  autobiography,  Stoddart's  "  Recollections  of  a 
Player,"  and  Henry  Austin  Clapp's  "  Reminiscences 
of  a  Dramatic  Critic,"  among  them. 

The  material  for  the  other  chapters  has  been  gath 
ered  from  many  sources,  none  of  which  is  important 
enough  to  be  mentioned  here.  Appleton's  "  Cyclo 
pedia  of  American  Biography  "  is  a  mine  from  which 
most  of  the  facts  concerning  any  American,  prom 
inent  twenty  years  or  more  ago,  may  be  dug;  but  it 
gives  only  the  dry  bones,  so  to  speak.  For  more 
than  that  you  must  go  to  the  individual  biographies 
in  your  public  library. 

If  you  live  in  a  small  town,  the  librarian  will  very 
probably  be  glad  to  permit  you  to  look  over  the 
shelves  yourself,  as  well  as  to  give  you  such  advice 
and  direction  as  you  may  need.  In  the  larger  cities, 
this  is,  of  course,  impossible,  to  say  nothing  of  the 
fact  that  you  would  be  lost  among  the  thousands  of 
books  on  the  shelves.  But  you  will  find  a  children's 
librarian  whose  business  and  pleasure  it  is  to  help 
children  to  the  right  books.  If  this  book  helps  you 
to  form  the  library  habit,  and  gives  you  an  incentive 
to  the  further  study  of  art  and  literature,  it  will  more 
than  fulfill  its  mission. 


18 


CHAPTEK   II 

WRITERS  OF    PROSE 

IT  is  true  of  American  literature  that  it  can  boast 
no  name  of  commanding  genius — no  dramatist  to 
rank  with  Shakespeare,  no  poet  to  rank  with  Keats, 
no  novelist  to  rank  with  Thackeray,  to  take  names 
only  from  our  cousins  oversea — and  yet  it  displays 
a  high  level  of  talent  and  a  notable  richness  of 
achievement.  Literature  requires  a  background  of  his 
tory  and  tradition;  more  than  that,  it  requires  leisure. 
A  new  nation  spends  its  energies  in  the  struggle  for 
existence,  and  not  until  that  existence  is  assured  do 
its  finer  minds  need  to  turn  to  literature  for  self- 
expression.  As  Poor  Richard  put  it,  "  Well  done  is 
better  than  well  said,"  and  so  long  as  great  things 
are  pressing  to  be  done,  great  men  will  do  their 
writing  on  the  page  of  history,  and  not  on  papyrus, 
or  parchment,  or  paper. 

So,  in  the  early  history  of  America,  the  settlers  in 
the  new  country  were  too  busily  employed  in  fight 
ing  for  a  foothold,  in  getting  food  and  clothing,  in 
keeping  body  and  soul  together,  to  have  any  time 
for  the  fine  arts.  Most  of  the  !N"ew  England  divines 
tried  their  hands  at  limping  and  hob-nail  verse,  but 
prior  to  the  Revolution,  American  literature  is  re- 

19 


A  Guide  to  Biography 

markable  only  for  its  aridity,  its  lack  of  inspiration 
and  its  portentous  dulness.  In  these  respects  it  may 
proudly  claim  never  to  have  been  surpassed  in  the 
history  of  mankind.  In  fact,  American  literature, 
as  such,  may  be  said  to  date  from  1809,  when  Wash 
ington  Irving  gave  to  the  world  his  inimitable  "  His 
tory  of  New  York."  It  struck  a  new  and  wholly 
original  note,  with  a  sureness  bespeaking  a  master's 
touch. 

Where  did  Irving  get  that  touch?  That  is  a  ques 
tion  which  one  asks  vainly  concerning  any  master  of 
literature,  for  genius  is  a  thing  which  no  theory  can 
explain.  It  appears  in  the  most  unexpected  places. 
An  obscure  Corsican  lieutenant  becomes  Emperor  of 
Prance,  arbiter  of  Europe,  and  one  of  the  three  or 
four  really  great  commanders  of  history;  a  tinker  in 
Bedford  County  jail  writes  the  greatest  allegory  in 
literature;  and  the  son  of  two  mediocre  players 
develops  into  the  first  figure  in  American  letters. 
Conversely,  genius  seldom  appears  where  one  would 
naturally  look  for  it.  Seldom  indeed  does  genius 
beget  genius.  It  expends  itself  in  its  work. 

Certainly  there  was  no  reason  to  suppose  that  any 
child  of  William  Irving  and  Sarah  Sanders  would 
develop  genius  even  of  the  second  order,  more  espe 
cially  since  they  had  already  ten  who  were  just 
average  boys  and  girls.  Nor  did  the  eleventh,  who 
•was  christened  Washington,  show,  in  his  youth,  any 
glimpse  of  the  eagle's  feather. 

Born  in  1783,  in  New  York  City,  a  delicate  child 
and  one  whose  life  was  more  than  once  despaired  of, 

20 


Writers  of  Prose 

Washington  Irving  received  little  formal  schooling, 
but  was  allowed  to  amuse  himself  as  he  pleased  by 
wandering  up  and  down  the  Hudson  and  keeping  as 
much  as  possible  in  the  open  air.  It  was  during 
these  years  that  he  gained  that  intimate  knowledge 
of  the  Hudson  River  Valley  of  which  he  was  to  make 
such  good  use  later  on.  He  still  remained  delicate, 
however,  and  at  the  age  of  twenty  was  sent  to 
Europe.  The  air  of  France  and  Italy  proved  to  be 
just  what  he  needed,  and  he  soon  developed  into  a 
fairly  robust  man. 

With  health  regained,  he  returned,  two  years 
later,  to  America,  and  got  himself  admitted  to  the 
bar.  Why  he  should  have  gone  to  this  trouble  is  a 
mystery,  for  he  never  really  seriously  tried  to  practise 
law.  Instead,  he  was  occupying  himself  with  a  serio 
comic  history  of  New  York,  which  grew  under  his 
pen  into  as  successful  an  example  of  true  and  sus 
tained  humor  as  our  literature  possesses.  The  subject 
was  one  exactly  suited  to  Irving's  genius,  and  he 
allowed  his  fancy  to  have  free  play  about  the  pic 
turesque  personalities  of  Wouter  Van  Twiller,  and 
Wandle  Schoonhovon,  and  General  Van  Poffen- 
burgh,  in  whose  very  names  there  is  a  comic  sugges 
tion.  When  it  appeared,  in  1809,  it  took  the  town, 
by  storm. 

Irving,  indeed,  had  created  a  legend.  The  history, 
supposed  to  have  been  written  by  one  Diedrich 
Knickerbocker,  gives  to  the  story  of  New  York  just 
the  touch  of  fancy  and  symbolism  it  needed.  For  all 
time,  New  York  will  remain  the  Knickerbocker  City. 

21 


A  Guide  to  Biography 

The  book  revealed  a  genuine  master  of  kindly  satire, 
and  established  its  author's  reputation  beyond  pos 
sibility  of  question.  Perhaps  the  surest  proof  of  its 
worth  is  the  fact  that  it  is  read  to-day  as  widely  and 
enjoyed  as  thoroughly  as  it  ever  was. 

It  is  strange  that  Irving  did  not  at  once  adopt 
letters  as  a  profession;  but  instead  of  that,  he  en 
tered  his  brothers'  business  house,  which  was  in  a 
decaying  condition,  and  to  which  he  devoted  nine 
harassed  and  anxious  years,  before  it  finally  failed. 
That  failure  decided  him,  and  he  cast  in  his  lot 
finally  with  the  fortunes  of  literature.  He  was  at 
that  time  thirty-five  years  of  age — an  age  at  which 
most  men  are  settled  in  life,  with  an  established 
profession,  and  a  complacent  readiness  to  drift  on  into 
middle  age. 

Karely  has  any  such  choice  as  Irving's  received 
so  prompt  and  triumphant  a  vindication,  for  a  year 
later  appeared  the  "  Sketch  Book,"  with  its  "  Rip 
Yan  Winkle,'7  its  "  Legend  of  Sleepy  Hollow  "  and 
"  The  Spectre  Bridegroom  " — to  mention  only  three 
of  the  thirty-three  items  of  its  table  of  contents — 
which  proved  the  author  to  be  not  only  a  humorist 
of  the  first  order,  but  an  accomplished  critic,  essayist 
and  short-story  writer.  The  publication  of  this  book 
marked  the  culmination  of  his  literary  career.  It 
is  his  most  characteristic  and  important  work,  and 
on  it  and  his  "  History,"  his  fame  rests. 

He  lived  for  forty  years  thereafter,  a  number  of 
which  were  spent  in  Spain,  first  as  secretary  of  lega 
tion,  and  afterwards  as  United  States  minister  to  that 

22 


Writers  of  Prose 

country.  It  was  during  these  years  that  he  gathered 
the  materials  for  his  "  Life  of  Columbus/'  his  "  Con 
quest  of  Granada,"  and  his  "  Alhambra,"  which  has 
been  called  with  some  justice,  "  The  Spanish  Sketch 
Book."  A  tour  of  the  western  portion  of  the  United 
States  resulted  also  in  three  books,  "  The  Adventures 
of  Captain  Bonneville,"  "Astoria,"  and  "A  Tour 
on  the  Prairies."  His  last  years  were  spent  at  "  Sun- 
nyside,"  his  home  at  Tarrytown,  on  the  Hudson, 
where  he  amused  himself  by  writing  biographies  of 
Mahomet,  of  Goldsmith,  and  of  George  Washington. 

All  of  this  was,  for  the  most  part,  what  is  called 
"hack  work,"  and  his  turning  to  it  proves  that  he 
himself  was  aware  that  his  fount  of  inspiration  had 
run  dry.  This  very  fact  marks  his  genius  as  of  the 
second  order,  for  your  real  genius — your  Shakes 
peare  or  Browning  or  Thackeray  or  Tolstoi — never 
runs  dry,  but  finds  welling  up  within  him  a  perpetual 
and  self-renewing  stream  of  inspiration,  fed  by 
thought  and  observation  and  every-day  contact  with 
the  world. 

Irving's  closing  years  were  rich  in  honor  and  affec 
tion,  and  found  him  unspoiled  and  uncorrupted.  He 
was  always  a  shy  man,  to  whom  publicity  of  any 
kind  was  most  embarrassing;  and  yet  he  managed  to 
be  on  the  most  intimate  of  terms  with  his  time,  and 
to  possess  a  wide  circle  of  friends  who  were  devoted 
to  him. 

Such  was  the  career  of  America's  first  successful 
man  of  letters.  For,  strangely  enough,  he  had  suc 
ceeded  in  making  a  good  living  with  his  pen.  More 

23 


A  Guide  to  Biography 

than  that,  his  natural  and  lambent  humor,  his  charm 
and  grace  of  style,  and  a  literary  power  at  once 
broad  and  genuine,  had  won  him  a  place,  if  not 
among  the  crowned  heads,  at  least  mong  the  princes 
of  literature,  side  by  side  with  Goldsmith  and  Addi- 
son.  Thackeray  called  him  "  the  first  ambassador 
whom  the  JSTew  World  of  letters  sent  to  the  Old/' 
and  from  the  very  first  he  identified  American  lit 
erature  with  purity  of  life  and  elevation  of  char 
acter,  with  kindly  humor  and  grace  of  manner — 
qualities  which  it  has  never  lost. 

Two  years  after  the  appearance  of  the  "  Sketch 
Book,"  another  star  suddenly  flamed  out  upon  the 
literary  horizon,  and  for  a  time  quite  eclipsed  Irving 
in  brilliancy.  It  waned  somewhat  in  later  years,  but, 
though  we  have  come  to  see  that  it  lacks  the  purity 
and  gentle  beauty  of  its  rival,  it  has  still  found  a 
place  among  the  brightest  in  our  literary  heaven — 
where,  indeed,  only  one  or  two  of  the  first  magnitude 
shine.  J.  Fenimore  Cooper  was,  like  Irving,  a  prod 
uct  of  New  York  state,  his  father  laying  out  the 
site  of  Cooperstown,  on  Lake  Otsego,  and  moving 
there  from  New  Jersey  in  1790,  when  his  son  was 
only  a  year  old.  James,  as  the  boy  was  known,  was 
the  eleventh  of  twelve  children — another  instance  of 
a  single  swan  amid  a  flock  of  ducklings. 

Cooperstown  was  at  that  time  a  mere  outpost  of 
civilization  in  the  wilderness,  and  it  was  in  this 
wilderness  that  Cooper's  boyhood  was  passed.  And 
just  as  Irving's  boyhood  left  its  impress  on  his  work, 
so  did  Cooper's  in  even  greater  degree.  Mighty 

24 


"Writers  of  Prose 

woods,  broken  only  here  and  there  by  tiny  clear 
ings,  stretched  around  the  little  settlement;  In 
dians  and  frontiersmen,  hunters,  traders,  trappers — 
all  these  were  a  part  of  the  boy's  daily  life.  He 
grew  learned  in  the  lore  of  the  woods,  and  laid  up 
unconsciously  the  stores  from  which  he  was  after- 
vards  to  draw. 

At  the  age  of  eleven,  he  was  sent  to  a  private 
school  at  Albany,  and  three  years  later  entered  Yale. 
But  he  had  the  true  woodland  spirit;  he  preferred 
the  open  air  to  the  lecture-room,  and  was  so  careless 
in  his  attendance  at  classes  that,  in  his  third  year, 
he  was  dismissed  from  college.  There  is  some  ques 
tion  whether  this  was  a  blessing  or  the  reverse.  £To 
doubt  a  thorough  college  training  would  have  made 
Cooper  incapable  of  the  loose  and  turgid  style  which 
characterizes  all  his  novels ;  but,  on  the  other  hand, 
he  left  college  to  enter  the  navy,  and  there  gained 
that  knowledge  of  seamanship  and  of  the  ocean  which 
make  his  sea  stories  the  best  of  their  kind  that  have 
ever  been  written.  His  sea  career  was  cut  short,  just 
before  the  opening  of  the  war  of  1812,  by  his  mar 
riage  into  an  old  Tory  family,  who  insisted  that  he 
resign  from  the  service.  He  did  so,  and  entered 
upon  the  quiet  life  of  a  well-to-do  country  gentle 
man. 

For  seven  or  eight  years,  he  showed  no  desire  nor 
aptitude  to  be  anything  else.  He  had  never  written 
anything  for  publication,  had  never  felt  any  impulse 
to  do  so,  and  perhaps  never  would  have  felt  such  an 
impulse  but  for  an  odd  accident.  Tossing  aside  a 

25 


A  Guide  to  Biography 

dull  British  novel,  one  day,  he  remarked  to  his  wife 
that  he  could  easily  write  a  better  story  himself, 
and  she  laughingly  dared  him  to  try.  The  result  was 
"  Precaution/'  than  which  no  British  novel  could  be 
duller.  But  Cooper,  finding  the  work  of  writing  con 
genial,  kept  at  it,  and  the  next  year  saw  the  publica 
tion  of  "  The  Spy,"  the  first  American  novel  worthy 
of  the  name.  By  mere  accident,  Cooper  had  fourd 
his  true  vein,  the  story  of  adventure,  and  his  true 
field  in  the  scenes  with  which  he  was  himself  familiar. 
In  Harvey  Birch,  the  spy,  he  added  to  the  world's 
gallery  of  fiction  the  first  of  his  three  great  char 
acters,  the  other  two  being,  of  course,  Long  Tom 
Coffin  and  Leatherstocking. 

The  book  was  an  immediate  success,  and  was  fol 
lowed  by  "  The  Pioneers  "  and  "  The  Pilot,"  both 
remarkable  stories,  the  former  visualizing  for  the 
first  time  the  life  of  the  forest,  the  latter  for  the 
first  time  the  life  of  the  sea.  Let  us  not  forget  that 
Cooper  wras  himself  a  pioneer  and  blazed  the  trails 
which  so  many  of  his  successors  have  tried  to  follow. 
If  the  trail  he  made  was  rough  and  difficult,  it  at 
least  possesses  the  merits  of  vigor  and  pristine 
achievement.  "The  Spy,"  "The  Pioneers,"  and 
"  The  Pilot  "  established  Cooper's  reputation  not  only 
in  this  country,  but  in  England  and  France.  He  be 
came  a  literary  lion,  with  the  result  that  his  head, 
never  very  firmly  set  upon  his  shoulders,  was  com 
pletely  turned;  he  set  himself  up  as  a  mentor  and 
critic  of  both  continents,  and  while  his  successive 
novels  continued  to  be  popular,  he  himself  became 

26 


Writers  of.  Prose 

involved  in  numberless  personal  controversies,  which 
embittered  his  later  years. 

The  result  of  these  quarrels  was  apparent  in  his 
work,  which  steadily  decreased  in  merit,  so  that,  of 
the  thirty-three  novels  that  he  wrote,  not  over  twelve 
are,  at  this  day,  worth  reading.  But  those  twelve 
paint,  as  no  other  novelist  has  ever  painted,  life  in 
the  forest  and  on  the  ocean,  and  however  we  may 
quarrel  with  his  wooden  men  and  women,  his  faults 
of  taste  and  dreary  wastes  of  description,  there  is 
about  them  some  intangible  quality  which  compels 
the  interest  and  grips  the  imagination  of  school-boy 
and  gray-beard  alike.  He  splashed  his  paint  on  a 
great  canvas  with  a  whitewash  brush,  so  to  speak;  it 
will  not  bear  minute  examination;  but  at  a  distance, 
with  the  right  perspective,  it  fairly  glows  with  life. 
No  other  American  novelist  has  added  to  fiction 
three  such  characters  as  those  we  have  mentioned; 
into  those  he  breathed  the  breath  of  life — the  su 
preme  achievement  of  the  novelist. 

For  seventeen  years  after  the  publication  of  "  The 
Spy,"  Cooper  had  no  considerable  American  rival. 
Then,  in  1837,  the  publication  of  a  little  volume 
called  "  Twice-Told  Tales  "  marked  the  advent  of  a 
greater  than  he.  No  one  to-day  seriously  questions 
Nathaniel  Hawthorne's  right  to  first  place  among 
American  novelists,  and  in  the  realm  of  the  short 
story  he  has  only  one  equal,  Edgar  Allan  Poe. 

We  shall  speak  of  Poe  more  at  length  as  a  poet; 
but  it  is  curious  and  interesting  to  contrast  these 
two  men,  contemporaries,  and  the  most  significant 

27 


A  Guide -to  Biography 

figures  in  the  literature  of  their  country — Poe,  an 
actor's  child,  an  outcast,  fighting  in  the  dark  with 
the  balance  against  him,  living  a  tragic  life  and  dying 
a  tragic  death,  leaving  to  America  the  purest  lyrics 
and  most  compelling  tales  ever  produced  within  her 
borders;  Hawthorne,  a  direct  descendant  of  the  Pur 
itans,  a  recluse  and  a  dreamer,  his  delicate  genius 
developing  gradually,  marrying  most  happily,  lead 
ing  an  idyllic  family  life,  winning  success  and  sub 
stantial  recognition,  which  grew  steadily  until  the 
end  of  his  career,  and  which  has,  at  least,  not  dimin 
ished — could  any  contrast  be  more  complete? 

3sTathaniel  Hawthorne  was  a  direct  descendant  of 
that  "William  Hawthorne  who  came  from  England 
in  1630  with  John  Winthrop  in  the  "Arabella," 
and  was  born  at  Salem,  Massachusetts,  the  family's 
ancestral  home,  in  1804.  He  was  a  classmate  of 
Longfellow  at  Bowdoin  College,  graduating  without 
especial  distinction,  and  spending  the  twelve  succeed 
ing  years  at  Salem,  living  a  secluded  life  in  accord 
ance  with  his  abnormally  shy  and  sensitive  disposi 
tion.  He  was  already  resolved  on  the  literary  life, 
and  spent  those  years  in  solitary  writing.  The  result 
was  a  morbid  novel,  "  Fanshawe,"  and  a  series  of 
short  stories,  none  of  which  attracted  especial  atten 
tion  or  gave  indication  of  more  than  average  talent. 
Not  until  1837  did  he  win  any  measure  of  success, 
but  that  year  saw  the  publication  of  the  first  series 
of  "  Twice-Told  Tales,"  which,  by  their  charm  and 
delicacy,  won  him  many  readers. 

Even  at  that,  he  found  the  profession  of  letters 
28 


HAWTHORNE 


Writers  of  Prose 

so  unprofitable  that  lie  was  glad  to  accept  a  position 
as  weigher  and  ganger  at  the  Boston  cnstom-honse, 
but  he  lost  the  place  two  years  later  by  a  change 
in  administration;  tried,  for  a  while,  living  with  the 
Transcendentalists  at  Brook  Farm,  and  finally,  tak 
ing  a  leap  into  the  unknown,  married  and  settled 
down  in  the  old  manse  at  Concord.  It  was  a  most 
fortunate  step;  his  wife  proved  a  real  inspiration, 
and  in  the  months  that  followed,  he  wrote  the  sec 
ond  series  of  "  Twice-Told  Tales,"  and  "  Mosses  from 
an  Old  Manse,"  which  mark  the  culmination  of  his 
genius  as  a  teller  of  tales. 

Four  years  later,  the  political  pendulum  swung 
back  again,  and  Hawthorne  was  offered  the  surveyor- 
ship  of  the  custom-house  at  Salem,  accepted  it,  and 
moved  his  family  back  to  his  old  home.  He  held 
the  position  for  four  years,  completed  his  first  great 
romance,  and  in  1850  gave  to  the  world  "  The  Scarlet 
Letter,'7  perhaps  the  most  significant  and  vital  novel 
produced  by  any  American.  Hawthorne  had,  at  last, 
"  found  himself."  A  year  later  came  "  The  House 
of  the  Seven  Gables,"  and  then,  in  quick  succes 
sion,  "  Grandfather's  Chair,"  "  The  "Wonder  Book," 
"  The  Snow-Image,"  "  The  Blithedale  Komance,"  and 
"  Tanglewood  Tales." 

A  queer  product  of  his  pen,  at  this  time,  was  a 
life  of  Franklin  Pierce,  the  Democratic  candidate  for 
the  Presidency;  and  when  Pierce  was  elected,  he 
showed  his  gratitude  by  offering  Hawthorne  the  con 
sulship  at  Liverpool,  a  lucrative  position  which  Haw 
thorne  accepted  and  which  he  held  for  four  years. 

29 


A  Guide  to  Biography 

Two  years  on  the  continent  followed,  and  in  1860r 
he  returned  home,  his  health  breaking  and  his  mind 
unsettled,  largely  by  the  prospect  of  the  Civil  War 
into  which  the  country  was  drifting.  He  found 
himself  unable  to  write,  failed  rapidly,  and  the  end 
came  in  the  spring  of  1864. 

Of  American  novelists,  Hawthorne  alone  shows 
that  sustained  power  and  high  artistry  belonging  to 
the  masters  of  fiction;  and  yet  his  novels  have  not 
that  universal  appeal  which  belongs  to  the  few  really 
great  ones  of  the  world.  Hawthorne  was  supremely 
the  interpreter  of  old  New  England,  a  subject  of 
comparatively  little  interest  to  other  peoples,  since 
old  ]N"ew  England  was  distinguished  principally  by  a 
narrow  spiritual  conflict  which  other  peoples  find 
difficult  to  understand.  The  subject  of  "  The  Scarlet 
Letter  "  is,  indeed,  one  of  universal  appeal,  and  is,  in 
some  form,  the  theme  of  nearly  all  great  novels ;  but 
its  setting  narrowed  this  appeal,  and  Hawthorne's 
treatment  of  his  theme,  symbolical  rather  than  simple 
and  concrete,  narrowed  it  still  further.  Yet  with  all 
that,  it  possesses  that  individual  charm  and  subtlety 
which  is  apparent,  in  greater  or  less  degree,  in  all 
of  his  imaginative  work. 

Contemporary  with  Hawthorne,  and  surviving  him 
by  a  few  years,  was  another  novelist  who  had,  in  his 
day,  a  tremendous  reputation,  but  who  is  now  almost 
forgotten,  William  Gilmore  Simms.  We  shall  con 
sider  him — for  he  was  also  a  maker  of  verse — in 
the  next  chapter,  in  connection  with  his  fellow-towns 
men,  Henry  Timrod  and  Paul  Hamilton  Hayne.  So 

30 


Writers  of  Prose 

we  pause  liere  only  to  remark  that  the  obscurity 
which  enfolds  him  is  more  dense  than  he  de 
serves,  and  that  anyone  who  likes  frontier  fiction, 
somewhat  in  the  manner  of  Cooper,  will  enjoy 
reading  "  The  Yemassee,"  the  best  of  Simms's 
books. 

Hawthorne  stands  so  far  above  the  novelists  who 
come  after  him  that  one  rather  hesitates  to  mention 
them  at  all.  With  one,  or  possibly  two,  exceptions, 
the  work  of  none  of  them  gives  promise  of  per 
manency — so  far  as  can  be  judged,  at  least,  in  look 
ing  at  work  so  near  that  it  has  no  perspective. 
Prophesying  has  always  been  a  risky  business,  and 
will  not  be  attempted  here.  But,  whether  immortal 
or  not,  there  are  some  five  or  six  novelists  whose 
work  is  in  some  degree  significant,  and  who  deserve 
at  least  passing  study. 

Harriet  Beecher  Stowe  is  one  of  these.  Born  in 
1811,  the  daughter  of  Lyman  Beecher,  and  perhaps 
the  most  brilliant  member  of  a  brilliant  family,  be 
ginning  to  write  while  still  a  child,  and  continuing 
to  do  so  until  the  end  of  her  long  life,  Mrs.  Stowe's 
name  is  nevertheless  connected  in  the  public  mind 
with  a  single  book,  "  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,"  a  book 
which  has  probably  been  read  by  more  people  than 
any  other  ever  written  by  an  American  author.  Mrs. 
Stowe  had  lived  for  some  years  in  Cincinnati  and 
had  visited  in  Kentucky,  so  that  she  had  some  sur 
face  knowledge  of  slavery;  she  was,  of  course,  by 
birth  and  breeding,  an  abolitionist,  and  so  when, 
early  in  1851,  an  anti-slavery  paper  called  the  "  Na- 

31  * 


A  Guide  to  Biography 

tional  Era  "  was  started  at  Washington,  she  agreed 
to  furnish  a  "continued  story." 

The  first  chapter  appeared  in  April,  and  the  story 
ran  through  the  year,  attracting  little  attention.  But 
its  publication  in  book  form  marked  the  beginning 
of  an  immense  popularity  and  an  influence  probably 
greater  than  that  of  any  other  novel  ever  written.  It 
crystallized  anti-slavery  sentiment,  it  was  read  all 
over  the  world,  it  was  dramatized  and  gave  countless 
thousands  their  first  visualization  of  the  slave  traffic. 
That  her  presentation  of  it  was  in  many  respects 
untrue  has  long  since  been  admitted,  but  she  was 
writing  a  tract  and  naturally  made  her  case  as  strong 
as  she  could.  From  a  literary  standpoint,  too,  the 
book  is  full  of  faults;  but  it  is  alive  with  an  emo 
tional  sincerity  which  sweeps  everything  before  it. 
She  wrote  other  books,  but  none  of  them  is  read 
to-day,  except  as  a  matter  of  duty  or  curiosity. 

And  let  us  pause  here  to  point  out  that  the  under 
lying  principle  of  every  great  work  of  art,  whether 
a  novel  or  poem  or  painting  or  statue,  is  sincerity. 
Without  sincerity  it  cannot  be  great,  no  matter  how 
well  it  is  done,  with  what  care  and  fidelity;  and  with 
sincerity  it  may  often  attain  greatness  without  per 
fection  of  form,  just  as  "  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  "  did. 
But  to  lack  sincerity  is  to  lack  soul;  it  is  a  body 
without  a  spirit. 

We  must  refer,  too,  to  the  most  distinctive  Amer 
ican  humorist  of  the  last  half  century,  Samuel  Lang- 
home  Clemens — "  Mark  Twain."  Born  in  Missouri, 
knocking  about  from  pillar  to  post  in  his  early  years, 


Writers  of  Prose 

serving  as  pilot's  boy  and  afterwards  as  pilot  on  a 
Mississippi  steamboat,  as  printer,  editor,  and  what 
not,  but  finally  "  finding  himself "  and  making  an 
immense  reputation  by  the  publication  of  a  burlesque 
book  of  European  travel,  "  Innocents  Abroad/7  he 
followed  it  up  with  such  widely  popular  stories  as 
"  Tom  Sawyer/7  "  Huckleberry  Finn/'  "  The  Prince 
and  the  Pauper/'  and  many  others,  in  some  of  which, 
at  least,  there  seems  to  be  an  element  of  permanency.  ' 
"  Huckleberry  Finn/'  indeed,  has  been  hailed  as 
the  most  distinctive  work  produced  in  America — an 
estimate  which  must  be  accepted  with  reservations. 

Three  living  novelists  have  contributed  to  Amer 
ican  letters  books  of  insight  and  dignity — William 
Dean  Howells,  George  W.  Cable  and  Henry  James. 
Mr.  Howells  has  devoted  himself  to  careful  and  pains 
taking  studies  of  American  life,  and  has  occasionally 
struck  a  note  so  true  that  it  has  found  wide  apprecia 
tion.  The  same  thing  may  be  said  of  Mr.  Cable's 
stories  of  the  South,  and  especially  of  the  Creoles 
of  Louisiana ;  while  Mr.  James,  perhaps  as  the  result 
of  his  long  residence  abroad,  has  ranged  over  a  wider 
field,  and  has  chosen  to  depict  the  evolution  of  char 
acter  by  thought  rather  than  by  deed,  in  his  early 
work  showing  a  rare  insight.  Of  the  three,  he  seems 
most  certain  of  a  lasting  reputation. 

Others  of  less  importance  have  made  some  special  - 
corner  of  the  country  theirs,  and  possess  a  sort  of 
squatter-right  over  it.     To  Bret  Harte  belongs  mid- 
century  California;  to  Mary  Noailles  Murfree,  the 
Tennessee  mountains;  to  James  Lane  Allen  and  John 

33 


A  Guide  to  Biography 

Fox,  present-day  Kentucky;  to  Mary  Johnston,  co 
lonial  Virginia;  to  Ellen  Glasgow,  present-day  Vir 
ginia;  to  Stewart  Edward  "White,  the  great  north 
west.  Others  cultivate  a  field  peculiar  to  themselves. 
Frank  R.  Stockton  is  whimsically  humorous,  Edith 
Wharton  cynically  dissective;  Mary  Wilkins  Free 
man  is  most  at  home  with  rural  New  England  char 
acter;  and  Thomas  Nelson  Page  has  done  his  best 
work  in  the  South  of  reconstruction  days. 

But  of  the  great  mass  of  fiction  being  written  in 
America  to-day,  little  is  of  value  as  literature.  It 
is  designed  for  the  most  part  as  an  amusing  occupa 
tion  for  idle  hours.  Read  some  of  it,  by  all  means, 
if  you  enjoy  it,  since  "  all  work  and  no  play  makes 
Jack  a  dull  boy";  but  remember  that  it  is  only  the 
sweetmeat  that  comes  at  the  end  of  the  meal,  and 
for  sustenance,  for  the  bread  and  butter  of  the  lit 
erary  diet,  you  must  read  the  older  books  that  are 
worth  while. 

It  may  be  questioned  whether  America  has  pro 
duced  any  poet  or  novelist  or  essayist  of  the  very 
first  rank,  but,  in  another  branch  of  letters,  four 
names  appear,  which  stand  as  high  as  any  on  the 
scroll.  The  writing  of  history  is  not,  of  course,  pure 
literature;  it  is  semi-creative  rather  than  creative; 
and  yet,  at  its  best,  it  demands  a  high  degree  of 
imaginative  insight.  It  appears  at  its  best  in  the 
works  of  Prescott,  Motley,  Bancroft  and  Parkman. 

George  Bancroft  was,  of  this  quartette,  the  most 
widely  known  half  a  century  ago,  because  he  chose 

34 


Writers  of  Prose 

as  his  theme  the  history  of  America,  and  because  he 
was  himself  for  many  years  prominent  in  the  polit 
ical  life  of  the  country.  Born  in  Massachusetts  in 
1800,  graduating  from  Harvard,  and,  after  a  course 
of  study  in  Germany,  resolving  to  be  a  historian, 
he  returned  to  America  and  began  work  on  his  his 
tory,  the  first  volume  of  which  appeared  in  1834. 
Three  years  later,  came  the  second  volume,  and  in 
1840,  the  third. 

Glowing  with  national  spirit  as  they  did,  they  at 
tracted  public  attention  to  him,  and  he  was  soon 
drawn  into  politics.  During  the  next  twelve  years  he 
held  several  government  positions,  among  them  Sec 
retary  of  the  $"avy  and  Minister  to  England,  which 
gave  him  access  to  great  masses  of  historical  docu 
ments.  It  was  not  until  1852  that  his  fourth  volume 
appeared,  then  five  more  followed  at  comparatively 
frequent  intervals.  Again  politics  interrupted.  He 
was  sent  as  Minister  to  Prussia  and  later  to  the 
German  Empire,  again  largely  increasing  his  store 
of  original  documents,  with  which,  toward  the  last, 
he  seems  to  have  been  fairly  overburdened.  In 
1874,  he  published  his  tenth  volume,  bringing  his 
narrative  through  the  Revolution,  and  eight  years 
later,  the  last  two  dealing  with  the  adoption  of  the 
Constitution.  His  last  years  were  spent  in  revising 
and  correcting  this  monumental  work. 

It  is  an  inspiring  record — a  life  devoted  consist 
ently  to  one  great  work,  and  that  work  the  service 
of  one's  country,  for  such  Bancroft's  really  was. 
Every  student  of  colonial  and  revolutionary  America 

35 


A  Guide  to  Biography 

must  turn  to  him,  and  while  his  history  has  long 
since  ceased  to  be  generally  read,  it  maintains  an 
honored  place  among  every  collection  of  books  deal 
ing  with  America.  It  is  easily  first  among  the  old- 
school  histories  as  produced  by  such  men  as  Hildreth. 
Tucker,  Palfrey  and  Sparks. 

At  the  head  of  the  other  school,  which  has  been 
called  cosmopolitan  because  it  sought  its  subjects 
abroad  rather  than  at  home,  stands  William  Hickling 
Fresco tt.  Of  this  school,  Washington  Irving  may 
fairly  be  said  to  have  been  the  pioneer.  We  have 
seen  how  his  residence  in  Spain  turned  his  attention 
to  the  history  of  that  country  and  resulted  in  three 
notable  works.  Prescott,  however,  was  a  historian 
by  forethought  and  not  by  accident.  Before  his 
graduation  from  Harvard,  he  had  determined  to  lead 
a  literary  life  modelled  upon  that  of  Edward  Gibbon. 
His  career  was  almost  wrecked  at  the  outset  by  an 
unfortunate  accident  which  so  impaired  his  sight  that 
he  was  unable  to  read  or  to  write  except  with  the 
assistance  of  a  cumbrous  machine.  That  any  man, 
laboring  under  such  a  disability,  should  yet  persevere 
in  pursuing  the  rocky  road  of  the  historian  seems 
almost  unbelievable;  yet  that  is  just  what  Prescott 
did. 

Let  us  tell  the  story  of  that  accident.  It  was 
while  he  was  at  Harvard,  in  his  junior  year.  One 
day  after  dinner,  in  the  Commons  Hall,  some  of  the 
boys  started  a  rude  frolic.  Prescott  took  no  part  in 
it,  but  just  as  he  was  leaving,  a  great  commotion 
behind  him  caused  him  to  turn  quickly,  and  a  hard 

36 


Writers  of  Prose 

piece  of  bread,  thrown  undoubtedly  at  random, 
struck  him  squarely  and  with  great  force  in  the  left 
eye.  He  fell  unconscious,  and  never  saw  out  of  that 
eye  again.  "Worse  than  that,  his  other  eye  soon 
grew  inflamed,  and  became  almost  useless  to  him,, 
besides  causing  him,  from  time  to  time,  the  most 
acute  suffering.  But  in  spite  of  all  this,  he  persisted 
in  his  determination  to  be  a  historian. 

After  careful  thought,  he  chose  for  his  theme  that 
period  of  Spanish  history  dominated  by  Ferdinand 
and  Isabella,  and  went  to  work.  Documents  were 
collected,  an  assistant  read  to  him  for  hours  at  a 
time,  notes  were  taken,  and  the  history  painfully 
pushed  forward.  The  result  was  a  picturesque  nar 
rative  which  was  at  once  successful  both  in  Europe 
and  America;  and,  thus  encouraged,  Prescott  selected 
another  romantic  theme,  the  conquest  of  Mexico,  for 
his  next  work.  Following  this  came  the  history  of 
the  conquest  of  Peru,  and  finally  a  history  of  the 
reign  of  Philip  II,  upon  which  he  was  at  work,  when 
a  paralytic  stroke  ended  his  career. 

Prescott  was  fortunate  not  only  in  his  choice  of 
subjects,  but  in  the  possession  of  a  picturesque  and 
fascinating  style,  which  has  given  his  histories  a 
remarkable  vogue.  Fault  has  been  found  with  him 
on  the  ground  of  historical  inaccuracy,  but  such 
criticism  is,  for  the  most  part,  unjustified.  His 
thoroughness,  his  judgment,  and  his  critical  faculty 
stand  unimpeached,  and  place  him  very  near  the 
head  of  American  historians. 

Prescott's  successor,  in  more  than  one  sense,  was 
37 


A  Guide  to  Biography 

John  Lotlirop  Motley.  A  Bostonian  and  Harvard 
man,  well-trained,  after  one  or  two  unsuccessful 
ventures  in  fiction,  lie  turned  his  attention  to  history, 
and  in  1856  completed  his  "  Rise  of  the  Dutch 
Republic,"  for  which  he  could  not  find  a  publisher. 
He  finally  issued  it  at  his  own  expense,  with  no  little 
inward  trembling,  but  it  was  at  once  successful  and 
seventeen  thousand  copies  of  it  were  sold  in  England 
alone  during  the  first  year.  It  received  unstinted 
praise,  and  Motley  at  once  proceeded  with  his  "  His 
tory  of  the  United  Netherlands."  The  opening  of 
the  Civil  War,  however,  recalled  his  attention  to  his 
native  land,  he  was  drawn  into  politics,  and  did  not 
complete  his  history  until  1868.  Six  years  later 
appeared  his  "John  of  Barneveld";  but  his  health 
was  giving  way  and  the  end  came  in  1877. 

In  brilliancy,  dramatic  instinct  and  power  of  pic 
turesque  narration,  Motley  was  Prescott's  equal,  if 
not  his  superior.  The  glow  and  fervor  of  his  nar 
rative  have  never  been  surpassed;  his  characters  live 
and  breathe;  he  was  thoroughly  in  sympathy  with 
his  subject  and  found  a  personal  pleasure  in  ex 
alting  his  heroes  and  unmasking  his  villains.  But 
there  was  his  weakness;  for  often,  instead  of  the 
impartial  historian,  he  became  a  partisan  of  this 
cause  or  that,  and  painted  his  heroes  whiter  and  his 
villains  blacker  than  they  really  were.  In  spite  of 
that,  or  perhaps  because  of  it — because  of  the  indi 
vidual  and  intensely  earnest  personal  point  of  view 
— his  histories  are  as  absorbing  and  fascinating  as 
any  in  the  world. 

38 


Writers  of  Prose 

The  last  of  this  noteworthy  group  of  historians, 
Francis  Parkman,  is  also,  in  many  respects,  the  great 
est.  He  combined  the  virtues  of  all  of  them,  and 
added  for  himself  methods  of  research  which  have 
never  been  surpassed.  Through  it  all,  too,  he  bat 
tled  against  a  persistent  ill-health,  which  unfitted 
him  for  work  for  months  on  end,  and,  even  at  the 
best,  would  permit  his  reading  or  writing  only  a  few 
minutes  at  a  time. 

Like  the  others,  Parkman  was  born  in  Boston, 
and,  as  a  boy,  was  so  delicate  that  he  was  allowed 
to  run  wild  in  the  country,  acquiring  a  love  of  nature 
which  is  apparent  in  all  his  books.  In  search  of 
health,  he  journeyed  westward  from  St.  Louis,  in 
1846,  living  with  Indians  and  trappers  and  gaining 
a  minute  knowledge  of  their  ways.  The  results  of 
this  journey  were  embodied  in  a  modest  little  vol 
ume  called  "  The  Oregon  Trail,"  which  remains  the 
classic  source  of  information  concerning  the  far  West 
at  that  period. 

Upon  his  return  to  the  East,  he  settled  down  in 
earnest  to  the  task  which  he  had  set  himself — a  his 
tory,  in  every  phase,  of  the  struggle  between  France 
and  England  for  the  possession  of  the  North  Amer 
ican  continent.  Years  were  spent  in  the  collection 
of  material — and  in  1865  appeared  his  "Pioneers 
of  France  in  the  New  World,"  followed  at  periods 
of  a  few  years  by  the  other  books  completing  the 
series,  which  ends  with  the  story  of  Montcalm  and 
Wolfe. 

The  series  is  a  masterpiece  of  interpretative  his- 
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A  Guide  to  Biography 

tory.  Every  phase  of  the  struggle  for  the  continent 
is  described  in  minute  detail  and  with  the  intimate 
touch  of  perfect  knowledge;  every  actor  in  the  great 
drama  is  presented  with  incomparable  vividness,  and 
its  scenes  are  painted  with  a  color  and  atmosphere 
worthy  of  Prescott  or  Motley,  and  with  absolute 
accuracy.  His  work  satisfies  at  once  the  student 
and  the  lover  of  literature,  standing  almost  unique  in 
this  regard.  His  flexible  and  charming  style  is  a 
constant  joy;  his  power  of  analysis  and  presentment 
a  constant  wonder;  and  throughout  his  work  there 
is  a  freshness  of  feeling,  an  air  of  the  open,  at  once 
delightful  and  stimulating.  He  said  the  last  word 
concerning  the  period  which  his  histories  cover,  and 
has  lent  to  it  a  fascination  and  absorbing  interest 
which  no  historian  has  surpassed.  The  boy  or  girl 
who  has  not  read  Parkman's  histories  has  missed  one 
of  the  greatest  treats  which  literature  has  to  offer. 

Other  historians  there  are  who  have  done  good 
service  to  American  letters  and  whose  work  is  out 
ranked  only  by  the  men  we  have  already  mentioned 
— John  Bach  McMaster,  whose  "  History  of  the  Peo 
ple  of  the  United  States  "  is  still  uncompleted;  James 
Ford  Rhodes,  who  has  portrayed  the  Civil  War 
period  with  admirable  exhaustiveness  and  accuracy; 
Justin  "Winsor,  Woodrow  Wilson,  William  M.  Sloane, 
and  John  Fiske.  John  Fiske's  work,  which  deals 
wholly  with  the  different  periods  of  American  his 
tory,  is  especially  suited  to  young  people  because  of 
its  simplicity  and  directness,  and  because,  while  ac 
curate,  it  is  not  overburdened  with  detail. 

40 


Writers  of  Prose 

"We  have  said  that,  during  the  Colonial  period  of 
American  history,  most  of  the  New  England  divines 
devoted  a  certain  amount  of  attention  to  the  com 
position  of  creaking  verse.  More  than  that,  they 
composed  histories,  biographies  and  numberless  works 
of  a  theological  character,  which  probably  constitute 
the  dullest  mass  of  reading  ever  produced  upon  this 
-earth.  The  Revolution  stopped  this  flood — if  any 
thing  so  dry  can  be  called  a  flood — and  when  the 
Revolution  ended,  public  thought  was  for  many 
years  occupied  with  the  formation  of  the  new  nation. 
But  in  the  second  quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century 
there  arose  in  New  England  a  group  of  writers  who 
are  known  as  Transcendentalists,  and  who  produced 
one  of  the  most  important  sections  of  American  lit 
erature. 

Transcendentalism  is  a  long  word,  and  it  is  rather 
difficult  to  define,  but,  to  put  it  as  briefly  as  pos 
sible,  it  was  a  protest  against  narrowness  in  intel 
lectual  life,  a  movement  for  broader  culture  and  for 
a  freer  spiritual  life.  It  took  a  tremendous  grip  on 
New  England,  beginning  about  1830,  and  kept  it 
for  nearly  forty  years;  for  New  England  has  always 
been  more  or  less  provincial — provincialism  being  the 
habit  of  measuring  everything  by  one  inadequate 
standard. 

The  high  priest  of  the  Transcendental  movement 
was  Amos  Bronson  Alcott,  born  on  a  Connecticut 
farm  in  1799,  successively  in  youth  a  clockmaker, 
peddler  and  book-agent,  and  finally  driven  by  dire 
necessity  to  teaching  school.  But  there  could  be  no 

41 


A  Guide  to  Biography 

success  at  school-teaching  for  a  man  the  most  ec 
centric  of  his  day — a  mystic,  a  follower  of  Oriental 
philosophy,  a  non-resistant,  an  advocate  of  woman 
suffrage,  an  abolitionist,  a  vegetarian,  and  heaven 
knows  what  besides.  So  in  the  end,  he  was  sold 
out,  and  removed  with  his  family  to  Concord,  where 
he  developed  into  a  sort  of  impractical  idealist,  hold 
ing  Orphic  conversations  and  writing  scraps  of  specu 
lation  and  criticism,  and  living  in  the  clouds  gen 
erally. 

Life  would  have  been  far  less  easy  for  him  but 
for  the  development  of  an  unexpected  talent  in  one 
of  his  daughters,  Louisa  May  Alcott.  From  her 
sixteenth  year,  Louisa  Alcott  had  been  writing  for 
publication,  but  with  little  success,  although  every 
dollar  she  earned  was  welcome  to  a  family  so  poor 
that  the  girls  sometimes  thought  of  selling  their  hair 
to  get  a  little  money.  She  also  tried  to  teach,  and 
finally,  in  1862,  went  to  "Washington  as  a  volunteer 
nurse  and  labored  for  many  months  in  the  military 
hospitals.  The  letters  she  wrote  to  her  mother  and 
sisters  were  afterwards  collected  in  a  book  called 
"  Hospital  Sketches."  At  last,  at  the  suggestion  of 
her  publishers,  she  undertook  to  write  a  girls'  story. 
The  result  was  "Little  Women,"  which  sprang  al 
most  instantly  into  a  tremendous  popularity,  and 
which  at  once  put  its  author  out  of  reach  of 
want. 

Other  children's  stories,  scarcely  less  famous,  fol 
lowed  in  quick  succession,  forming  a  series  which 
has  never  been  equalled  for  long-continued  vogue. 

42 


Writers  of  Prose 

Pew  children  who  read  at  all  have  failed  to  read 
"  Little  Men/'  "  Little  "Women,"  "  An  Old-Fashioned 
Girl/'  "  Eight  Cousins/'  and  "  Eose  in  Bloom/'  to 
mention  only  five  of  them,  and  edition  after  edition 
has  been  necessary  to  supply  a  demand  which  shows 
no  sign  of  lessening.  The  stories  are,  one  and  all, 
sweet  and  sincere  and  helpful,  and  while  they  are 
not  in  any  sense  literature,  they  are,  at  least,  an 
interesting  contribution  to  American  letters. 

But  to  return  to  the  Transcendentalists. 

The  most  picturesque  figure  of  the  group  was 
Margaret  Fuller.  Starting  as  a  morbid  and  senti 
mental  girl,  her  father's  death  seems  suddenly  to 
have  changed  her,  at  the  age  of  twenty-five,  into  a 
talented  and  thoughtful  woman.  Her  career  need 
not  be  considered  in  detail  here,  since  it  was  signif 
icant  more  from  the  inspiration  she  gave  others  than 
from  any  achievement  of  her  own.  She  proved 
herself  a  sympathetic  critic,  if  not  a  catholic  and 
authoritative  one,  and  a  pleasing  and  suggestive 
essayist. 

What  she  might  have  become  no  one  can  tell, 
for  her  life  was  cut  short  at  the  fortieth  year.  She 
had  spent  some  years  in  Italy,  in  an  epoch  of  revolu 
tions,  into  which  she  entered  heart  and  soul.  A 
romantic  marriage,  in  1847,  with  the  Marquis  Ossoli, 
served  further  to  identify  her  with  the  revolutionary 
cause,  and  when  it  tumbled  into  ruins,  she  and  her 
husband  escaped  from  Rome  and  started  for  Amer 
ica.  Their  ship  encountered  a  terrific  storm  off 
Long  Island,  was  driven  ashore,  broken  to  pieces 

43 


A  Guide  to  Biography 

by  the  waves,  and  both  she  and  her  husband  were 
drowned. 

By  far  the  greatest  of  the  Transcendental  group 
and  one  of  the  most  original  figures  in  American  lit 
erature  was  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson — a  figure,  indeed, 
in  many  ways  unique  in  all  literature.  Born  in 
Boston  in  1803,  the  son  of  a  Unitarian  clergyman 
and  a  member  of  a  large  and  sickly  family,  he  fol 
lowed  the  predestined  path  through  Harvard  College, 
graduating  with  no  especial  honors,  entered  the  min 
istry,  and  served  as  pastor  of  the  Second  Church 
of  Boston  until  1832.  Then,  finding  himself  ill  at 
ease  in  the  position,  he  resigned,  and,  settling  at 
Concord,  turned  to  lecturing,  first  on  scientific  sub 
jects  and  then  on  manners  and  morals.  His  reputa 
tion  grew  steadily,  and,  especially  in  the  generation 
younger  than  himself,  he  awakened  the  deepest  en 
thusiasm. 

In  1836,  the  publication  of  a  little  volume  called 
"  Mature  "  gave  conclusive  evidence  of  his  talent, 
and,  followed  as  it  was  by  his  "Essays,"  "Repre 
sentative  Men,"  and  "  Conduct  of  Life,"  established 
his  reputation  as  seer,  interpreter  of  nature,  poet  and 
moralist — a  reputation  which  has  held  its  own  against 
the  assaults  of  time. 

And  yet  no  personality  could  be  more  puzzling  or 
elusive.  He  was  at  once  attractive  and  repulsive — 
there  was  a  certain  line  which  no  one  crossed,  a 
charmed  circle  in  which  he  dwelt  alone.  There  was 
about  him  a  certain  coldness  and  detachment,  a  self- 
sufficiency,  and  a  prudence  which  held  him  back 

44 


EMERSON 


Writers  of  Prose 

from  giving  himself  unreservedly  to  any  cause.  He 
lacked  heart  and  temperament.  He  was  a  homely, 
shrewd  and  cold-blooded  Yankee,  to  put  it  plainly. 
Yet,  with  all  that,  he  was  a  serene  and  benignant 
figure,  of  an  inspiring  optimism,  a  fine  patriotism, 
and  profound  intellect — a  stimulator  of  the  best  in 
man.  Upon  this  basis,  probably,  his  final  claim  to 
memory  will  rest. 

Another  Transcendental  eccentric  wTith  more  than 
a  touch  of  genius  was  Henry  David  Thoreau,  and 
it  is  noteworthy  that  his  fame,  which  burned  dimly 
enough  during  his  life,  has  flamed  ever  brighter  and 
brighter  since  his  death.  This  increase  of  reputa 
tion  is  no  doubt  due,  in  some  degree,  to  the  "  return 
to  nature,"  which  has  recently  been  so  prominent  in 
American  life  and  which  has  gained  a  wide  hearing 
for  so  noteworthy  a  "  poet-naturalist " ;  but  it  is 
also  due  in  part  to  a  growing  recognition  of  the 
fact  that  as  a  writer  of  delightful,  suggestive  and 
inspiring  prose  he  has  had  few  equals. 

Thoreau  is  easily  our  most  extraordinary  man  of 
letters.  Born  in  Concord  of  a  poor  family,  but  man 
aging  to  work  his  way  through  Harvard,  he  spent 
some  years  teaching;  but  an  innate  love  of  nature 
and  of  freedom  led  him  to  seek  some  form  of  liveli 
hood  which  would  leave  him  as  much  his  own  master 
as  it  was  possible  for  a  poor  man  to  be.  To  earn 
money  for  any  other  purpose  than  to  provide  for 
one's  bare  necessities  was  to  Thoreau  a  grievous 
"waste  of  time,  so  it  came  about  that  for  many  years 
he  was  a  sort  of  itinerant  tinker,  a  doer  of  odd  jobs. 

45 


A  Guide  to  Biography 

Another  characteristic,  partly  innate  and  party  cul 
tivated,  was  a  distrust  of  society  and  a  dislike  of 
cities.  "  I  find  it  as  ever  very  unprofitable  to  have 
much  to  do  with  men,"  he  wrote;  and  finally,  in 
pursuance  of  this  idea,  he  built  himself  a  little  cabin, 
on  the  shore  of  Walden  pond,  where  he  lived  for 
some  two  years  and  a  half. 

It  was  there  that  his  best  work  was  done,  for,  at 
bottom,  Thoreau  was  a  man  of  letters  rather  than  a 
naturalist,  with  the  most  seeing  eye  man  ever  had. 
"  Walden,  or  Life  in  the  Woods,"  and  "  A  Week  on 
the  Concord  and  Merrimac  Kivers  "  contain  the  best 
of  Thoreau,  and  any  boy  or  girl  who  is  interested 
in  the  great  outdoors,  as  every  boy  and  girl  ought 
to  be,  will  enjoy  reading  them. 

The  last  of  the  Transcendental  group  worthy  of 
mention  here  is  George  William  Curtis,  a  versatile 
and  charming  personality,  not  a  genius  in  any  sense, 
but  a  writer  of  pleasant  and  amusing  prose,  an 
orator  of  no  small  ability,  and  one  of  the  truest 
patriots  who  ever  loved  and  labored  for  his  country. 
It  is  in  this  latter  aspect,  rather  than  as  the  author 
of  "  Mle  Notes  "  and  "  The  Potiphar  Papers,"  that 
Curtis  is  best  remembered  to-day.  The  books  that 
he  produced  have,  to  a  large  extent,  lost  their  appeal; 
but  the  work  he  did  during  the  dark  days  of  recon 
struction  and  after  entitles  him  to  admiring  and 
grateful  remembrance. 

It  is  scarcely  possible  to  close  a  chapter  upon 
American  prose  writers  without  referring  to  at  least 

46 


Writers  of  Prose 

one  of  the  great  editors  who  Lave  done  so  much  to 
mould  American  public  opinion.  To  James  Gordon 
Bennett  and  Charles  A.  Dana  only  passing  reference 
need  be  made;  but  Horace  Greeley  deserves  more 
extended  treatment. 

Early  in  the  last  century,  on  a  rocky  little  farm 
in  New  Hampshire,  lived  a  man  by  the  name  of 
Zaccheus  Greeley,  a  good  neighbor,  but  a  bad  man 
ager — so  bad  that,  in  1820,  when  his  son  Horace 
was  nine  years  old,  the  farm  was  seized  by  the 
sheriff  and  sold  for  debt.  The  proceeds  of  the  sale 
did  not  pay  the  debt,  and  so,  in  order  to  escape  arrest, 
for  they  imprisoned  people  for  debt  in  those  days, 
Zaccheus  Greeley  fled  across  the  border  into  Ver 
mont,  where  his  family  soon  joined  him.  He  man 
aged  to  make  a  precarious  living  by  working  at  odd 
jobs,  in  which,  of  course,  the  boy  joined  him  when 
ever  he  could  be  of  any  use. 

He  was  a  rather  remarkable  boy,  with  a  great 
fondness  for  books,  and  when  he  was  eleven  years 
old,  he  tried  to  get  a  position  in  a  printing  office, 
but  was  rejected  because  he  was  too  young.  Four 
years  later,  he  heard  that  a  boy  was  wanted  in  an 
office  at  East  Poultney,  and  he  hastened  to  apply  for 
the  position.  He  was  a  lank,  ungainly  and  dull- 
appearing  boy,  and  the  owner  of  the  office  did  not 
think  he  could  ever  learn  to  be  a  printer,  but  finally 
put  him  to  work,  with  the  understanding  that  he 
was  to  receive  nothing  but  his  board  and  clothes  for 
the  first  six  months,  and  after  that  forty  dollars  a 
year  additional. 

47 


A  Guide  to  Biography 

The  boy  soon  showed  an  unusual  aptitude  for  the 
business,  and  finally  decided  that  the  little  village 
was  too  restricted  a  field  for  his  talents.  With 
youth's  sublime  confidence,  he  decided  to  go  to  New 
York  City.  He  managed  to  get  a  position  in  a  print 
ing  office  there,  and  two  years  later,  at  the  age  of 
twenty-two,  he  and  a  partner  established  the  first 
one-cent  daily  newspaper  in  the  United  States.  It 
was  ahead  of  the  times,  however,  and  had  to  be 
abandoned  after  a  few  months. 

But  he  had  discovered  his  peculiar  field,  and  in 
1840  he  established  another  paper  which  he  called 
the  "  Log  Cabin,"  in  which  he  supported  William 
Henry  Harrison  through  the  famous  "  log  cabin  and 
hard  cider  "  campaign.  The  paper  was  a  success,  and 
in  the  year  following  he  established  the  New  York 
"  Tribune,"  which  was  destined  to  make  him  both  rich 
and  famous.  For  more  than  thirty  years  he  con 
ducted  the  "  Tribune,"  making  it  the  most  influential 
paper  in  the  country.  He  became  the  most  power 
ful  political  writer  in  the  United  States,  and  in  every 
village  groups  gathered  regularly  to  receive  their 
papers  and  to  see  what  "  Old  Horace  "  had  to  say. 
He  was  to  his  readers  a  strong  and  vivid  personality 
—they  had  faith  in  his  intelligence  and  honesty,  and 
they  believed  that  he  would  say  what  he  believed 
to  be  right,  regardless  of  whose  toes  were  pinched. 
It  was  as  different  as  possible  to  the  anonymous  jour 
nalism  of  to-day,  when  not  one  in  a  hundred  of  a 
newspaper's  readers  knows  anything  about  the  per 
sonality  of  the  editor. 

48 


GREELEY 


Writers  of  Prose 

"We  have  already  referred  to  the  fact  that,  at  the 
beginning  of  secession,  Greeley  doubted  the  right 
of  the  North  to  compel  the  seceding  states  to  remain 
in  the  Union.  Indeed,  he  counselled  peaceful  sep 
aration  rather  than  war,  as  did  many  others,  but  he 
was  later  a  staunch  supporter  of  President  Lincoln's 
policy. 

We  have  also  spoken  of  the  fact  that,  when  Grant 
was  re-nominated  for  President  in  1872,  a  large  sec 
tion  of  the  party,  believing  him  incompetent,  broke 
away  from  the  party  and  named  a  candidate  of  their 
own.  The  party  they  formed  was  called  the  Liberal 
Republican,  and  their  candidate  was  Horace  Greeley. 
They  managed  to  secure  for  him  the  support  of  the 
Democratic  convention,  which  placed  him  at  the  head 
of  the  Democratic  ticket,  but  they  could  not  secure 
the  support  of  the  Democrats  themselves,  who  could 
not  forget  that  Greeley  had  been  fighting  them  all 
his  life;  and  the  result  was  that  he  was  overwhelm 
ingly  defeated.  He  had  not  expected  such  a  result, 
his  health  had  been  undermined  by  the  labors  and 
anxieties  of  the  campaign,  and  before  the  rejoicing 
of  the  Republicans  was  over,  Greeley  himself  lay 
dead. 

SUMMARY 

IRVING,  WASHINGTON.  Born  at  New  York  City, 
April  3,  1783;  went  abroad  for  health,  1804;  returned 
to  America,  1806;  published  "Knickerbocker's  History 
of  New  York,"  1809;  attache  of  legation  at  Madrid, 
1826-29;  secretary  of  legation  at  London,  1829-32; 

49 


A  Guide  to  Biography 

minister  to  Spain,  1842-46;  died  at  Sunnyside,  near 
Tarry  town,  New  York,  November  28,  1859. 

COOPER,  JAMES  FENIMORE.  Born  at  Burlington, 
New  Jersey,  September  15,  1789;  entered  Yale,  1802, 
but  left  after  three  years ;  midshipman  in  United  States 
navy,  1808-11,  when  he  resigned  his  commission;  pub 
lished  first  novel,  "  Precaution,"  anonymously,  1820, 
and  followed  it  with  many  others ;  died  at  Cooperstown, 
New  York,  September  14,  1851. 

HAWTHORNE,  NATHANIEL.  Born  at  Salem,  Massa 
chusetts,  July  4,  1804;  graduated  at  Bowdoin  College, 
1825;  served  in  Custom  House  at  Boston,  1838-41;  at 
Brook  Farm,  1841;  settled  at  Concord,  Massachusetts, 
1843 ;  surveyor  of  the  port  of  Salem,  1846-49 ;  United 
States  consul  at  Liverpool,  1853-57;  published  "  Twice- 
Told  Tales/'  1837;  "Mosses  from  an  Old  Manse," 
1846;  "  The  Scarlet  Letter,"  1850;  "  The  House  of  the 
Seven  Gables,"  1851 ;  and  a  number  of  other  novels 
and  collections  of  tales ;  died  at  Plymouth,  New  Hamp 
shire,  May  19,  1864. 

STOWE,  HARRIET  BEECHER.  Born  at  Litchfield,  Con 
necticut,  June  14,  1812;  educated  at  Hartford,  Connec 
ticut;  taught  school  there  and  at  Cincinnati;  published 
"Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,"  1852;  "  Dred,"  1856;  and  a 
number  of  other  novels;  died  at  Hartford,  Connecticut, 
July  1,  1896. 

CLEMENS,  SAMUEL  LANGHORNE.  Born  at  Florida, 
Missouri,  November  30,  1835;  apprenticed  to  printer, 
1847;  alternated  between  mining  and  newspaper  work, 
until  the  publication  of  "  Innocents  Abroad,"  1869, 

50 


Writers  of  Prose 

made  him  famous  as  a  humorist ;  died  at  Redding,  Con 
necticut,  April  22,  1910;  published  many  collections  of 
short  stories  and  several  novels. 

BANCROFT,  GEORGE.  Born  at  Worcester,  Massachu 
setts,  October  3,  1800;  graduated  at  Harvard,  1817; 
collector  of  the  port  of  Boston,  1838-41;  Democratic 
candidate  for  governor  of  Massachusetts,  1844;  secre 
tary  of  the  navy,  1845-46;  minister  to  Great  Britain, 
1846-49;  minister  to  Berlin,  1867-74;  published  first 
volume  of  his  "History  of  the  United  States,"  1834, 
last  volume,  1874;  died  at  Washington,  Jan.  17,  1891. 

PRESCOTT,  WILLIAM  HICKLING.  Born  at  Salem, 
Massachusetts,  May  4,  1796;  published  "History  of  the 
Reign  of  Ferdinand  and  Isabella,"  1838 ;  "  Conquest 
of  Mexico,"  1843 ;  "  Conquest  of  Peru,"  1847 ;  "  His 
tory  of  the  Eeign  of  Philip  II,"  1858;  died  at  Boston, 
January  28,  1859. 

MOTLEY,  JOHN  LOTHROP.  Born  at  Dorchester  (now 
part  of  Boston),  Massachusetts,  April  15,  1814;  gradu 
ated  at  Harvard,  1831;  studied  abroad,  1831-34; 
United  States  minister  to  Austria,  1861-67,  and  to 
Great  Britain,  1869-70;  published  "Rise  of  the  Dutch 
Republic,"  1856;  "History  of  the  United  Nether 
lands,"  1868 ;  "  Life  and  Death  of  John  of  Barneveld," 
1874;  died  in  Dorset,  England,  May  29,  1877. 

PABKMAN,  FRANCIS.  Born  at  Boston,  September  16, 
1823;  graduated  at  Harvard,  1844;  published  "The 
Conspiracy  of  Pontiac,"  1851,  and  continued  series  of 
histories  dealing  with  the  French  in  America  to  "  A 
Half  Century  of  Conflict,"  1892;  died  at  Jamaica 
Plain,  near  Boston,  November  8,  1893. 

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A  Guide  to  Biography 

ALCOTT,  AMOS  BRONSON.  Born  at  Wolcott,  Connec 
ticut,  November  29,  1799;  a  book-peddler  and  school 
teacher,  conducting  a  school  in  Boston,  1834—37;  re 
moved  to  Concord,  1840 ;  published  "  Orphic  Sayings," 
1840;  "  Tablets,"  1868;  "Concord  Days,"  1872;  "Ta 
ble-Talk,"  1877;  "Sonnets  and  Canzonets,"  1882; 
died  at  Boston,  March  4,  1888. 

ALCOTT,  LOUISA  MAY.  Born  at  Germantown,  Penn 
sylvania,  November  29,  1832;  teacher  in  early  life  and 
army  nurse  during  Civil  War;  published  "Little 
Women,"  1868;  "Old-Fashioned  Girl,"  1869;  "Little 
Men,"  1871,  and  many  other  children's  stories;  died 
•at  Boston,  March  6,  1888. 

FULLER,  SARAH  MARGARET,  MARCHIONESS  OSSOLI. 
Born  at  Cambridgeport,  Massachusetts,  May  23,  1810; 
edited  Boston  Dial,  1840-42;  literary  critic  New 
York  Tribune,  1844-46 ;  published  "  Summer  on  the 
Lakes,"  1843;  "Woman  in  the  Nineteenth  Century," 
1845;  "Papers  on  Art  and  Literature,"  1846;  went  to 
Europe,  1846;  married  Marquis  Ossoli,  1847;  drowned 
off  Fire  Island,  July  16,  1850. 

EMERSON,  EALPH  WALDO.  Born  at  Boston,  Massa 
chusetts,  May  25,  1803;  graduated  at  Harvard,  1821; 
Unitarian  clergyman  at  Boston,  1829-32;  commenced 
career  as  lecturer,  1833,  and  continued  for  nearly  forty 
years;  edited  the  Dial,  1842-44;  published  "Nature," 
1836;  "Essays,"  1841;  "Poems,"  1846;  "Representa 
tive  Men,"  1850;  and  other  books  of  essays  and  poems; 
clied  at  Concord,  Massachusetts,  April  27,  1882. 

THOREAU,  HENRY  DAVID.  Born  at  Concord,  Massa 
chusetts,  July  12,  1817;  graduated  at  Harvard,  1837; 

52 


Writers  of  Prose 

lived  alone  at  Walden  Pond,  1845-47;  published  "A 
Week  on  the  Concord  and  Merrimac  Kivers,"  1849; 
"  Walden,  or  Life  in  the  Woods,"  1854;  died  at  Con 
cord,  May  6,  1862.  Several  collections  of  his  essays 
and  letters  were  published  after  his  death. 

CUKTIS,  GEOEGE  WILLIAM.  Born  at  Providence,, 
Rhode  Island,  February  24,  1824;  joined  the  Brook 
Farm  Community,  1842,  and  afterwards  spent  some 
years  in  travel;  published  "Nile  Notes  of  a  Howadji," 
"The  Howadji  in  Syria/'  "The  Potiphar  Papers," 
and  other  books;  prominent  as  an  anti-slavery  orator 
and  as  the  editor  of  "  Harper's  Weekly  " ;  died  at  West 
New  Brighton,  Staten  Island,  August  31,  1892. 

GREELEY,  HORACE.  Born  at  Amherst,  New  Hamp 
shire,  February  3,  1811 ;  founded  New  YorTc  Tribune, 
1841 ;  member  of  Congress  from  New  York,  1848—49 ; 
candidate  of  Liberal-Eepublican  and  Democratic  par 
ties  for  President,  1872;  died  at  Pleasantville,  West- 
chester  County,  New  York,  November  29,  1872. 


53 


CHAPTEE   III 

WRITERS   OF  VERSE 

"T)OETKY,"  says  the  Century  dictionary,  "is 
•»•  that  one  of  the  fine  arts  which  addresses  itself 
to  the  feelings  and  the  imagination  by  the  instru 
mentality  of  musical  and  moving  words";  and  that 
is  probably  as  concise  a  definition  of  poetry  as  can 
be  evolved.  For  poetry  is  difficult  to  define.  Verse 
we  can  describe,  because  it  is  mechanical;  but  poetry 
is  verse  with  a  soul  added. 

It  ie  for  this  very  reason  that  there  is  so  wide  a 
variance  in  the  critical  estimates  of  the  work  of 
individual  poets.  The  feelings  and  imagination  of 
no  two  persons  are  exactly  the  same,  and  what  will 
appeal  to  one  will  fail  to  appeal  to  the  other;  so 
that  it  follows  that  what  is  poetry  for  one  is  merely 
verse  for  the  other.  Tastes  vary  in  poetry,  just  as 
they  do  in  food.  Indeed,  poetry  is  a  good  deal  like 
food.  We  all  of  us  like  bread  and  butter,  and  we 
eat  it  every  day  and  get  good,  solid  nourishment  from 
it;  but  only  the  educated  palate  can  appreciate  the 
refinements  of  caviar,  or  Gorgonzola  cheese,  or  some 
rare  and  special  vintage.  So  most  of  us  derive  a  mild 
enjoyment  from  the  works  of  such  poets  as  Long 
fellow  and  Tennyson  and  Whittier;  but  it  requires 

5-i 


Writers  of  Verse 

a  trained  taste  to  appreciate  the  subtle  delights  of 
Browning  or  Edgar  Allan  Poe. 

Now  the  taste  for  the  simple  and  obvious  is  a 
natural  taste — the  child's  taste,  healthy,  and,  some 
will  add,  unspoiled;  but  poetry  must  be  judged  by 
the  nicer  and  more  exacting  standard,  just  as  all  other 
of  the  fine  arts  must.  I  wonder  if  you  have  ever 
read  what  is  probably  the  most  perfect  lyric  ever 
written  by  an  American?  I  am  going  to  set  it  down 
here  as  an  example  of  what  poetry  can  be,  and  I 
want  you  to  compare  your  favorite  poems,  whatever 
they  may  be,  with  it.  It  is  by  Edgar  Allan  Poe  and 
is  called 

TO  HELEN 

Helen,  thy  beauty  is  to  me 

Like  those  Nicaean  barks  of  yore; 
That  gently,  o'er  a  perfumed  sea, 

The  weary,  wayworn  wanderer  bore 

To  his  own  native  shore. 

On  desperate  seas  long  wont  to  roam; 

Thy  hyacinth  hair,  thy  classic  face, 
Thy  Naiad  airs,  have  brought  me  home 

To  the  glory  that  was  Greece 

And  the  grandeur  that  was  Rome. 

Lo !  in  yon  brilliant  window-niche 

How  statue-like  I  see  thee  stand, 
The  agate  lamp  within  thy  hand ! 

Ah,  Psyche,  from  the  regions  which 

Are  Holy  Land! 

In  1821 — the  same  year  which  saw  the  publication 
of  The  Spy,  the  first  significant  American  novel — 
there  appeared  at  Boston  a  little  pamphlet  of  forty;- 

55 


A  Guide  to  Biography 

four  pages,  bound  modestly  in  brown  paper  boards, 
and  containing  eight  poems.  Two  of  them  were 
"To  a  Waterfowl77  and  "  Thanatopsis,77  and  that 
little  volume  marked  the  advent  of  the  first  American 
poet — William  Cullen  Bryant.  Out  of  the  great 
mass  of  verse  produced  on  our  continent  for  two 
centuries  after  the  Pilgrim  Fathers  landed  on  Ply 
mouth  Rock,  his  was  the  first  which  displayed  those 
qualities  which  make  for  immortality. 

Before  him  our  greatest  poets  had  been  Philip 
Freneau,  the  "Poet  of  the  Revolution77;  Francis 
Scott  Key,  whose  supreme  achievement  was  "  The 
Star-Spangled  Banner  " ;  Fitz-Greene  Halleck,  known 
to  every  school-boy  by  his  "  Marco  Bozzaris,77  but 
chiefly  memorable  for  a  beautiful  little  lyric,  "  On 
the  Death  of  Joseph  Rodman  Drake  77 ;  and  Drake 
himself,  perhaps  the  greatest  of  the  four,  but  dying 
at  the  age  of  twenty-five  with  nothing  better  to  his 
credit  than  the  well-known  "  The  American  Flag,77 
and  the  fanciful  and  ambitious  "  The  Culprit  Fay.7' 
But  these  men  were,  at  best,  only  graceful  versifiers, 
and  Bryant  loomed  so  far  above  them  and  the  other 
verse-makers  of  his  time  that  he  was  hailed  as  a 
miracle  of  genius,  a  sort  of  Parnassan  giant  whose 
like  had  never  before  existed.  We  estimate  him 
more  correctly  to-day  as  a  poet  of  the  second  rank, 
whose  powers  were  limited  but  genuine.  Indeed, 
even  in  his  own  day,  Bryant7s  reputation  waned 
somewhat,  for  he  never  fulfilled  the  promise  of  that 
first  volume,  and  "  To  a  Waterfowl 77  and  "  Thana- 
topsis  77  remain  the  best  poems  he  ever  wrote. 

56 


Writers  of  Verse 

William  Cullen  Bryant  was  born  at  Cummington, 
Massachusetts,  in  1794,  the  son  of  a  physician,  from 
whom  he  received  practically  all  his  early  training, 
and  who  was  himself  a  writer  of  verse.  The  boy's 
talent  for  versification  was  encouraged,  and  some  of 
his  productions  were  recited  at  school  and  published 
in  the  poet's  corner  of  the  local  newspaper.  In 
1808,  when  Bryant  was  fourteen  years  old,  the  first 
volume  of  his  poems  was  printed  at  Boston,  with  an 
advertisement  certifying  the  extreme  youth  of  the 
author.  It  contained  nothing  of  any  importance,  and 
why  anyone  should  care  to  read  dull  verse  because 
it  was  written  by  a  child  is  incomprehensible,  but 
the  book  had  some  success,  and  Bryant's  father  was 
a  very  proud  man. 

Three  years  later,  Bryant  entered  Williams  College, 
but  soon  left,  and,  not  having  the  means  to  pay  his 
way  through  Yale,  gave  up  the  thought  of  college 
altogether,  and  began  the  study  of  law.  He  also  read 
widely  in  English  literature,  and  while  in  his  sev 
enteenth  year  produced  what  may  fairly  be  called 
the  first  real  poem  written  in  America,  "  Thana- 
topsis,"  a  wonderful  achievement  for  a  youth  of  that 
age.  Six  months  later  came  the  beautiful  lines,  "  To 
a  Waterfowl,"  and  Bryant's  career  as  a  poet  was 
fairly  begun.  In  1821  came  the  thin  volume  in 
which  these  and  other  poems  were  collected,  and  its 
success  finally  decided  its  author  to  relinquish  a 
career  at  the  bar  and  to  turn  to  literature. 

In  the  years  that  followed,  Bryant  produced  a  few 
other  noteworthy  poems,  yet  it  is  significant  of  the 

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thinness  of  his  inspiration  that,  though  he  began 
writing  in  early  youth  and  lived  to  the  age  of  eighty- 
four,  his  total  product  was  scant  in  the  extreme 
when  compared  with  that  of  any  of  the  acknowl 
edged  masters.  His  earnings  from  this  source 
were  never  great,  and,  removing  to  !New  York, 
he  secured,  in  1828,  the  editorship  of  the  Evening 
Post,  with  which  he  remained  associated  until  his 
death. 

In  his  later  years,  he  became  an  imposing  na 
tional  figure.  But  his  poetry  never  regained  the 
wide  acceptation  which  it  once  enjoyed,  largely  be 
cause  taste  in  verse  has  changed,  and  we  have  come 
to  lay  more  stress  upon  beauty  than  upon  ethical 
teaching. 

America  has  never  lacked  for  versifiers,  and 
Bryant's  success  encouraged  a  greater  throng  than 
ever  to  "  lisp  in  numbers  " ;  but  few  of  them  grew 
beyond  the  lisping  stage,  and  it  was  not  until  the 
middle  of  the  century  that  any  emerged  from  this 
throng  to  take  their  stand  definitely  beside  the  author 
of  "  Thanatopsis."  Then,  almost  simultaneously,  six 
others  disengaged  themselves — Longfellow,  Whittier, 
Poe,  Lowell,  Holmes  and  Emerson — and  remain  to 
this  day  the  truest  poets  in  our  history. 

Of  Emerson  we  have  already  spoken.  His  poetry 
has  been,  and  still  is,  the  subject  of  controversy.  To 
some,  it  is  the  best  in  our  literature;  to  others,  it  is 
not  poetry  at  all,  but  merely  rhythmic  prose.  It 
is  lacking  in  passion,  in  poetic  glow — for  how  can 
fire  come  out  of  an  iceberg? — but  about  some  of  it 

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Writers  of  Verse 

there  is  the  clean-cut  beauty  of  the  cameo.     You 
know,  of  course,  his  immortal  quatrain, 

Rhodora !  if  the  sages  ask  thee  why 

This  charm  is  wasted  on  the  earth  and  sky, 

Tell  them,  dear,  that  if  eyes  were  made  for  seeing, 

Then  Beauty  is  its  own  excuse  for  being. 

More  than  once  he  hit  the  bull's-eye,  so  to  speak, 
in  just  that  splendid  way. 

Of  the  others,  Henry  Wadsworth  Longfellow  is 
easily  first  in  popular  reputation,  if  not  in  actual 
achievement.  Born  at  Portland,  Maine,  in  1807,  of 
a  good  family,  he  developed  into  an  attractive  and 
promising  boy;  was  a  classmate  at  Bowdoin  College 
of  Nathaniel  Hawthorne,  and  after  three  years'  study 
abroad,  was  given  the  chair  of  modern  languages 
there.  For  five  years  he  held  this  position,  filling  it 
so  well  that  in  1834  he  was  called  to  Harvard.  He 
entered  upon  his  duties  there  after  another  year 
abroad,  and  continued  with  them  for  eighteen  years. 
The  remainder  of  his  life  was  spent  quietly  amid 
a  congenial  circle  of  friends  at  Cambridge.  He  was 
essentially  home-loving,  and  took  no  strenuous  in 
terest  in  public  affairs;  for  this  reason,  perhaps,  he 
won  a  warmer  place  in  public  affection  than  has  been 
accorded  to  any  other  American  man-of-letters,  for 
the  American  people  is  a  home-loving  people,  and 
especially  admires  that  quality  in  its  great  men. 

From  his  earliest  youth,  Longfellow  had  written 
verses  of  somewhat  unusual  merit  for  a  boy,  though 
remarkable  rather  for  smoothness  of  rhythm  than 

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for  depth  or  originality  of  thought.  His  modern 
language  studies  involved  much  translation,  but  his 
first  book,  "  Hyperion/'  was  not  published  until 
1839.  It  attained  a  considerable  vogue,  but  as  noth 
ing  to  the  wide  popularity  of  "  Voices  of  the  Mght," 
which  appeared  the  same  year.  Two  years  later  ap 
peared  "  Ballads  and  Other  Poems,"  and  the  two 
collections  established  their  author  in  the  popular 
heart  beyond  possibility  of  assault.  They  contained 
"  A  Psalm  of  Life,"  "  The  Reaper  and  the  Flow 
ers,"  "The  Village  Blacksmith,"  and  "Excelsior," 
which,  however  we  may  dispute  their  claims  as 
poetry,  have  taken  their  place  among  the  treasured 
household  verse  of  the  nation. 

Four  years  later,  in  "  The  Belfry  of  Bruges  and 
Other  Poems/'  he  added  two  more  to  this  collection, 
"  The  Day  is  Done  "  and  "  The  Bridge."  The  publi 
cation,  in  1847,  of  "  Evangeline  "  raised  him  to  the 
zenith  of  his  reputation.  His  subsequent  work  con 
firmed  him  in  popular  estimation  as  the  greatest  of 
American  poets — "  Hiawatha,"  "  The  Courtship  of 
Miles  Standish,"  and  such  shorter  poems  as  "  Resig 
nation,"  "The  Children's  Hour,"  "Paul  Revere's 
Ride,"  and  "  The  Old  Clock  on  the  Stairs." 

But,  after  all,  Longfellow  was  not  a  really  great 
poet.  He  lacked  the  strength  of  imagination,  the 
sureness  of  insight  and  the  delicacy  of  fancy  neces 
sary  to  great  poetry.  He  was  rather  a  sentimentalist 
to  whom  study  and  practice  had  given  an  excep 
tional  command  of  rhythm.  The  prevailing  note  of 
his  best-known  lyrics  is  one  of  sentimental  sorrow 

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—the  note  which  is  of  the  very  widest  appeal.  His 
public  is  largely  tlie  same  public  which  weeps  over 
the  death  of  little  Nell  and  loves  to  look  at  Landseer's 
"  The  Old  Shepherd's  Chief  Mourner."  Longfellow 
and  Dickens  and  Landseer  were  all  great  artists  and 
did  admirable  work,  but  scarcely  the  very  highest 
work.  But  Longfellow's  ballads  "  found  an  echo  in 
the  universal  human  heart,"  and  won  him  an  affec 
tion  such  as  has  been  accorded  no  other  modern  poet. 
His  place  is  by  the  hearth-side  rather  than  on  the 
mountain-top  —  by  far  the  more  comfortable  and 
cheerful  position  of  the  two. 

The  year  of  Longfellow's  birth  witnessed  that  of 
another  American  poet,  more  virile,  but  of  a  nar 
rower  appeal — John  Greenleaf  Whittier.  Whittier's 
birthplace  was  the  old  house  at  East  Haverhill,  Mas 
sachusetts,  where  many  generations  of  his  Quaker 
ancestors  had  dwelt.  The  family  was  poor,  and  the 
boy's  life  was  a  hard  and  cramped  one,  with  few 
opportunities  for  schooling  or  culture;  yet  its  very 
rigor  made  for  character,  and  developed  that  courage 
and  simplicity  which  were  Whittier's  noblest  at 
tributes. 

What  there  was  in  the  boy  that  moved  him  to 
write  verse  it  would  be  difficult  to  say — some  bent, 
some  crotchet,  which  defies  explanation.  Certain  it 
is  that  he  did  write;  his  sister  sent  some  of  his  verses 
to  a  neighboring  paper,  and  the  result  was  a  visit 
from  its  editor,  William  Lloyd  Garrison,  who  en 
couraged  the  boy  to  get  some  further  schooling,  and 
afterwards  helped  him  to  secure  a  newspaper  position 

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in  Boston.  But  his  health  failed  him,  and  he  re 
turned  to  Haverhill,  removing,  in  1836,  to  Ames- 
bury,  where  the  remainder  of  his  life  was  spent. 

He  had  already  become  interested  in  politics,  had 
joined  the  abolitionists,  and  was  soon  the  most  in 
fluential  of  the  protestants  against  slavery.  Into 
this  battle  he  threw  himself  heart  and  soul.  It  is 
amusing  to  reflect  that,  though  a  Quaker  and  ad 
vocate  of  non-resistance,  he  probably  did  more  to 
render  the  Civil  War  inevitable  than  any  other  one 
man.  During  the  war,  his  lyrics  aided  the  Northern 
cause;  and  as  soon  as  it  was  over,  he  labored  un 
ceasingly  to  allay  the  evil  passions  which  the  contest 
had  aroused.  He  lived  to  the  ripe  age  of  eighty-five, 
simply  and  bravely,  and  his  career  was  from  first  to 
last  consistent  and  inspiring,  one  of  the  sweetest  and 
gentlest  in  history. 

Although  Whittier  was  endowed  with  a  brighter 
spark  of  the  divine  fire  than  Longfellow,  he  himself 
was  conscious  that  he  did  not  possess 

The  seerlike  power  to  show 

The  secrets  of  the  heart  and  mind. 

He  was  lacking,  too,  in  intellectual  equipment — in 
culture,  in  mastery  of  rhythm  and  diction,  in  felic 
itous  phrasing.  And  yet,  on  at  least  two  occasions, 
he  rang  sublimely  true — in  his  denunciation  of  Web 
ster,  "  Ichabod,"  and  in  his  idyll  of  New  England 
rural  life,  "  Snow-Bound." 

The  third  of  these  New  England  poets,  and  also 
the  least  important,  is  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes.  Born 

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at  Cambridge,  in  the  inner  circle  of  New  England 
aristocracy,  educated  at  Harvard,  and  studying  med 
icine  in  Boston  and  Paris,  he  practiced  his  profession 
for  twelve  years,  until,  in  1847,  he  was  called  to  the 
chair  of  anatomy  and  physiology  at  Harvard,  con 
tinuing  in  that  position  until  1882.  He  lived  until 
1894,  the  last  survivor  of  the  seven  poets  whom  we 
have  mentioned. 

During  his  student  days,  Holmes  had  gained  con 
siderable  reputation  as  a  writer  of  humorous  and 
sentimental  society  verse,  and  during  his  whole  life 
he  wrote  practically  no  other  kind.  Long  practice 
gave  him  an  easy  command  of  rhythm,  and  a  care 
ful  training  added  delicacy  to  his  diction.  He  be 
came  remarkably  dexterous  in  rhyme,  and  grew 
to  be  the  recognized  celebrant  of  class  reunions  and 
public  dinners.  Urbane,  felicitous  and  possessing  an 
unflagging  humor,  he  was  the  prince  of  after-dinner 
poets — not  a  lofty  position,  be  it  observed,  nor  one 
making  for  immortal  fame.  His  highwater  mark 
was  reached  in  three  poems,  "  The  Chambered 
Nautilus,"  "The  Deacon's  Masterpiece,"  and  that 
faultless  piece  of  familiar  verse,  "  The  Last  Leaf," 
all  of  which  are  widely  and  affectionately  known. 
He  lacked  power  and  depth  of  imagination,  the  field 
in  which  he  was  really  at  home  was  a  narrow  one, 
and  the  verdict  of  time  will  probably  be  that  he  was 
a  pleasant  versifier  rather  than  a  true  poet. 

His  claim  to  the  attention  of  posterity  is  likely  to 
rest,  not  on  his  verses,  but  upon  a  sprightly  hodge 
podge  of  imaginary  table-talk,  called  "  The  Autocrat 

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of  the  Breakfast-Table  " — a  warm-hearted,  kindly 
book,  which  still  retains  its  savor. 

And  this  brings  us  to  our  most  versatile  man-of- 
letters — James  Russell  Lowell.  Born  at  Cambridge, 
in  the  old  house  called  "  Elmwood,"  so  dear  to  his 
readers,  spending  an  ideal  boyhood  in  the  midst  of 
a  cultured  circle,  treading  the  predestined  path 
through  Harvard,  studying  law  and  gaining  admis 
sion  to  the  bar — such  was  the  story  of  his  life  for 
the  first  twenty-five  years.  As  a  student  at  Harvard, 
he  had  written  a  great  deal  of  prose  and  verse  of 
considerable  merit,  and  he  continued  this  work  after 
graduation,  gaining  a  livelihood  somewhat  precarious, 
indeed,  yet  sufficient  to  render  it  unnecessary  for 
him  to  attempt  to  practice  law.  But  it  was  not  until 
1848  that  he  really  "  struck  his  gait." 

Certainly,  then,  he  struck  it  to  good  purpose  by 
the  publication  of  the  "  Biglow  Papers  "  and  "  A 
Fable  for  Critics,"  and  stood  revealed  as  one  of  the 
wisest,  wittiest,  most  fearless  and  most  patriotic  of 
moralists  and  satirists.  For  the  "Biglow  Papers" 
mark  a  culmination  of  American  humorous  and 
satiric  poetry  which  has  never  since  been  rivalled; 
and  the  "  Fable  for  Critics  "  displays  a  satiric  power 
unequalled  since  the  days  when  Byron  laid  his  lash 
along  the  backs  of  "  Scotch  Reviewers." 

Both  were  real  contributions  to  American  letters, 
but  as  pure  poetry  both  were  surpassed  later  in  the 
same  year  by  his  "  Vision  of  Sir  Launfal."  These 
three  productions,  indeed,  promised  more  for  the 
future  than  Lowell  was  able  to  perform.  He  had 

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gone  up  like  a  balloon;  but,  instead  of  mounting 
higher,  he  drifted  along  at  the  same  level,  and  at 
last  came  back  to  earth. 

The  succeeding  seven  years  saw  no  production  of 
the  first  importance  from  his  pen,  although  a  series 
of  lectures  on  poetry,  which  he  delivered  before  the 
Lowell  Institute,  brought  him  the  offer  of  the  chair 
at  Harvard  which  Longfellow  had  just  relinquished. 
Two  years  later,  he  became  editor  of  the  Atlantic 
Monthly,  holding  the  position  until  1861.  During 
this  time,  he  wrote  little,  but  the  opening  of  the  Civil 
War  gave  a  fresh  impetus  to  his  muse,  his  most 
noteworthy  contribution  to  letters  being  the  "  Com 
memoration  Ode  "  "with  which  he  marked  its  close — 
a  poem  which  has  risen  steadily  in  public  estimation, 
and  which  is,  without  doubt,  the  most  notable  of  its 
kind  ever  delivered  in  America.  The  poems  which 
he  published  during  the  next  twenty  years  did  little 
to  enhance  his  reputation,  which,  as  a  poet,  must  rest 
upon  his  "  Biglow  Papers,"  his  odes,  and  his  "  Vision 
of  Sir  Launfal." 

Yet  poetry  was  but  one  of  his  modes  of  expression, 
and,  some  think,  the  less  important  one.  Immedi 
ately  following  the  Civil  War,  he  turned  his  atten 
tion  to  criticism,  and  when  these  essays  were  collected 
under  the  titles  "  Among  My  Books "  and  "  My 
Study  Windows,"  they  proved  their  author  to  be  the 
ablest  critic,  the  most  accomplished  scholar,  the  most 
cultured  writer — in  a  word,  the  greatest  all-around 
man-of-letters,  in  America. 

This  prominence  brought  him  the  offer  of  the 
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Spanish  mission,  which  he  accepted,  going  from 
Madrid  to  London,  in  1880,  as  Ambassador  to  Great 
Britain,  and  remaining  there  for  five  years.  The 
service  he  did  there  is  incalculable;  as  the  spokesman 
for  America  and  the  representative  of  American  cul 
ture,  he  took  his  place  with  dignity  and  honor  among 
England's  greatest;  his  addresses  charmed  and  im 
pressed  them,  and  he  may  be  fairly  said  to  have  laid 
the  foundations  of  that  cordial  friendship  between 
America  and  Great  Britain  which  exists  to-day.  "  I 
am  a  bookman,"  was  Lowell's  proudest  boast — not 
only  a  writer  of  books,  but  a  mighty  reader  of  books; 
and  he  is  one  of  the  most  significant  figures  in  Amer 
ican  letters. 

So  we  come  to  the  man  who  measures  up  more 
nearly  to  the  stature  of  a  great  poet  than  any  other 
American — Edgar  Allan  Poe.  Outside  of  America, 
there  has  never  been  any  hesitancy  in  pronouncing 
Poe  the  first  poet  of  his  country;  but,  at  home,  it 
is  only  recently  his  real  merit  has  come  to  be  at  all 
generally  acknowledged. 

Edgar  Allan  Poe  was  born  in  Boston  in  1809 — 
a  stroke  of  purest  irony  on  the  part  of  fate,  for  he 
was  in  no  respect  a  Bostonian,  and  it  was  to  Bos- 
tonians  especially  that  he  was  anathema.  His  parents 
were  actors,  travelling  from  place  to  place,  and  his 
birth  at  Boston  was  purely  accidental.  They  had 
no  home  and  no  fortune,  but  lived  from  hand  to 
mouth,  in  the  most  precarious  way,  and  both  of 
them  were  dead  before  their  son  was  two  years  old. 
He  had  an  elder  brother  and  a  younger  sister,  and 

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these  three  babies  were  left  stranded  at  Richmond, 
Virginia,  entirely  without  money.  Luckily  they  were 
too  young  to  realize  how  very  dark  their  future 
was,  and  the  Providence  which  looks  after  the 
sparrows  also  looked  after  them.  The  wife  of 
a  well-to-do  tobacco  merchant,  named  John  Allan, 
took  a  fancy  to  the  dark-eyed,  dark-haired  boy 
of  two,  and,  having  no  children  of  her  own,  adopted 
him. 

It  was  better  fortune  than  he  could  have  hoped 
for,  for  he  was  brought  up  in  comfort  in  a  good 
home,  and  his  foster-parents  seem  to  have  loved  him 
and  to  have  been  ambitious  for  his  future.  He  was 
an  erratic  boy,  and  was  soon  to  get  into  the  first  of 
those  difficulties  which  ended  by  wrecking  his  life. 
For,  entering  the  University  of  Virginia,  he  made 
the  mistake  of  associating  with  a  fast  set,  with  whom 
he  had  no  business,  and  ended  by  losing  heavy  sums 
of  money,  which  he  was,  of  course,  unable  to  pay, 
and  which  his  foster-father  very  properly  refused 
to  pay  for  him.  Instead,  he  removed  the  boy  from 
college  and  put  him  to  work  in  his  office  at  Rich 
mond. 

Edgar  felt  that,  in  refusing  to  pay  his  debts,  his 
foster-father  had  besmirched  his  honor.  The  thought 
rankled  in  his  soul,  and  he  ended  by  running  away 
from  home.  He  got  to  Boston,  somehow,  and  en 
listed  in  the  army,  serving  for  three  years  as  a  private. 
At  the  end  of  that  time,  there  was  a  reconciliation 
between  him  and  his  foster-father,  and  the  latter 
provided  a  substitute  for  him  in  the  army,  and  se- 

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cured  him  an  appointment  to  the  military  academy 
at  West  Point. 

Why  Poe  should  have  felt  that  he  was  fitted  for 
army  life  is  difficult  to  understand,  since  he  had 
always  been  impatient  of  discipline;  but  to  West 
Point  he  went  and  very  promptly  got  into  trouble 
there,  which  culminated,  at  the  end  of  the  year,  in 
court-martial  and  dismissal.  He  knew  that  his  foster- 
father's  patience  was  exhausted,  and  that  he  could 
expect  nothing  more  from  him,  and  he  soon  proved 
himself  incapable  of  self-support. 

He  drifted  from  ISTew  York  to  Baltimore,  often 
without  knowing  where  his  next  meal  was  coming 
from,  and  finally,  at  Baltimore,  his  father's  widowed 
sister  gave  him  a  home,  and  he  soon  married  her 
fragile  daughter,  Virginia  Clemm.  But  he  had  long 
been  a  prey  to  intemperance,  and  his  habits  in  con 
sequence  were  so  irregular  that  he  was  unable  to 
retain  any  permanent  position.  The  truth  seems 
to  be  that  Poe  was  of  a  temperament  so  intensely 
nervous  and  sensitive  that  the  smallest  amount  of 
alcoholic  stimulant  excited  him  beyond  control,  and 
he  lacked  the  will-power  to  leave  it  alone  altogether, 
which  was  his  only  chance  of  safety. 

Yet  he  had  gained  a  certain  reputation  with  dis 
cerning  people  by  the  publication  of  a  few  poems  of 
surprising  merit,  as  well  as  a  number  of  tales  as 
remarkable  and  compelling  as  have  ever  been  writ 
ten  in  any  language.  That  is  a  broad  statement, 
and  yet  it  is  literally  true.  STot  only  is  Poe 
America's  greatest  poet,  but  he  is  still  more 

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decidedly  her  greatest  short-story  writer — so  much 
the  greatest,  that  with  the  exception  of  Nathaniel 
Hawthorne,  she  has  never  produced  another  to  rival 
him. 

If  further  testimony  to  his  genius  were  needed,  it 
might  be  found  in  the  fact  that  he  was  still  unable 
to  make  a  living  with  his  pen,  and  was  forced  to 
see  his  wife  growing  daily  weaker  without  the  means 
to  provide  her  proper  nourishment.  His  sufferings 
were  frightful;  he  was  compelled  to  bend  his  pride  to 
an  appeal  for  public  charity,  and  the  death  of  his 
wife  wrecked  such  moral  self-control  as  he  had  re 
maining. 

The  rest  is  soon  told.  There  was  a  rapid  deterio 
ration,  and  on  October  3,  1849,  he  was  found  un 
conscious  in  a  saloon  at  Baltimore,  where  an  elec 
tion  had  been  in  progress  and  where  Poe  had  been 
made  drunk  and  then  used  as  an  illegal  voter.  He 
was  taken  to  a  hospital,  treated  for  delirium  tr emeus, 
and  died  three  days  later,  a  miserable  outcast,  at  an 
age  where  he  should  have  been  at  the  very  zenith 
of  his  powers.  The  pages  of  the  world's  history 
show  no  death  more  pathetically  tragic. 

Such  a  death  naturally  offended  right-thinking  peo 
ple.  Especially  did  it  offend  the  New  England  con 
science,  which  has  never  been  able  to  divorce  art 
from  morals;  and  as  the  literary  dominance  of  New 
England  was  at  that  time  absolute,  Poe  was  buried 
under  a  mass  of  uncharitable  criticism.  It  should 
not  be  forgotten  that  he  had  struck  the  poisoned 
barb  of  his  satire  deep  into  many  a  New  England 

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A  Guide  to  Biography 

sage,  and  it  "was,  perhaps,  only  human  nature  to 
strike  back.  So  it  came  to  pass  that  Poe  was  pointed 
out,  not  as  a  man  of  genius,  but  as  a  horrible  ex 
ample  and  degrading  influence  to  be  sedulously 
avoided. 

With  foreign  readers,  all  this  counted  for  noth 
ing.  They  were  concerned  not  with  the  life  of  the 
man,  but  with  the  work  of  the  artist,  and  they  found 
that  work  consummately  good.  They  were  charmed 
and  thrilled  by  the  haunting  melody  of  his  verse 
and  the  weird  horror  of  his  tales.  In  his  own  coun 
try,  recognition  of  his  genius  has  grown  rapidly  of 
recent  years.  Within  his  own  sphere,  he  is  unques 
tionably  the  greatest  artist  America  can  boast — he 
climbed  Parnassus  higher  than  any  of  his  country 
men,  and  if  he  did  not  quite  attain  a  seat  among 
the  immortals,  he  at  least  caught  some  portion  of 
their  radiance. 

After  Poe,  the  man  whom  foreign  critics  consider 
America's  most  representative  poet  is  another  who 
has  been  without  honor  in  his  own  country,  and 
about  whom,  even  yet,  there  is  the  widest  difference 
of  opinion — Walt  Whitman.  Whitman  was  ostra 
cized  for  many  years  not  because  of  his  life,  which 
was  regular  and  admirable  enough,  but  because  of 
his  verse,  which  is  exceedingly  irregular  in  more  than 
one  respect. 

Whitman  was  by  birth  and  training  a  man  of  the 
people.  His  father  was  a  carpenter,  and,  after  re 
ceiving  a  common-school  education,  the  boy  entered 
a  printer's  office  at  the  age  of  thirteen.  A  printer's 

70 


Writers  of  Verse 

office  is,  in  itself,  a  source  of  education,  and  "Whit 
man  soon  began  to  write  for  the  papers,  finally  going 
to  New  York  City,  where,  for  twelve  years,  he 
worked  on  Newspaper  Row,  as  reporter  or  com 
positor,  making  friends  with  all  sorts  and  conditions 
of  men  and  entering  heart  and  soul  into  the  busy 
life  of  the  great  city.  The  people,  the  seething 
masses  on  the  streets,  had  a  compelling  fascination 
for  him. 

Tiring  of  New  York,  at  last,  he  started  on  a  tramp 
trip  to  the  southwest,  worked  in  New  Orleans  and 
other  towns,  swung  around  through  the  northwest, 
and  so  back  to  Brooklyn,  where  he  became,  strangely 
enough,  a  contractor — a  builder  and  seller  of  houses. 
He  had  been  reading  a  great  deal,  all  these  years,  but 
as  yet  had  given  no  indication  of  what  was  to  be  his 
literary  life-work. 

And  yet,  fermenting  inside  the  man  and  at  last 
demanding  expression,  was  a  strange  new  philosophy 
of  democracy,  all-tolerant,  holding  the  individual  to 
be  of  the  first  importance,  male  and  female  equal, 
the  body  to  be  revered  no  less  than  the  soul.  For 
the  promulgation  of  this  philosophy,  some  worthy 
literary  form  was  needed — poetry,  since  that  was 
the  noblest  form,  but  poetry  stripped  of  conventions 
and  stock  phrases,  as  "  fluent  and  free  as  the  people 
and  the  land  and  the  great  system  of  democracy 
which  it  was  to  celebrate.7'  With  some  such  idea  as 
this,  not  outlined  in  words,  nor,  perhaps,  very  clearly 
understood  even  by  himself,  Whitman  set  to  work, 
and  the  result  was  the  now  famous  "  Leaves  of 

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A  Guide  to  Biography 

Grass,"  a  collection  of  twelve  poems,  printed  by  the 
author  in  Brooklyn  in  1855. 

Like  most  other  philosophies  and  prophecies,  it  fell 
on  heedless  ears.  Few  people  read  it,  and  those  who 
did  were  exasperated  by  its  far-fetched  diction  or 
scandalized  by  its  free  treatment  of  delicate  topics. 
In  the  next  year,  a  second  edition  appeared,  con 
taining  thirty-two  poems;  but  the  book  had  practi 
cally  no  sale. 

Then  came  the  Civil  "War,  and  Whitman,  volun 
teering  not  for  the  field,  but  for  work  in  the  hos 
pitals,  proved  that  the  doctrine  of  brotherly  love,  so 
basic  to  his  poems,  was  basic  also  to  his  character. 
"  3Tot  till  the  sun  excludes  you,  neither  will  I  ex 
clude  you,"  he  had  declared;  and  now  he  devoted 
himself  to  nursing,  on  battlefield,  in  camp  and 
hospital,  doing  what  he  could  to  cheer  and  lighten 
the  worst  side  of  war,  an  attractive  and  inspiring 
figure. 

Lincoln,  looking  out  of  a  window  of  the  White 
House,  saw  him  go  past  one  day;  a  majestic  person 
with  snow-white  beard  and  hair,  his  cotton  shirt  open 
at  the  throat,  six  feet  tall  and  perfectly  proportioned; 
and  the  President,  without  knowing  who  he  was,  but 
mistaking  him  probably  for  a  common  laborer, 
turned  to  a  friend  who  stood  beside  him  and  re 
marked,  "  There  goes  a  man !  "  And  Whitman  was 
a  man.  Up  to  that  time,  he  had  never  been  ill  a 
day;  but  two  years  later,  at  the  age  of  fifty-three, 
his  health  gave  way,  under  the  strain  of  nursing,  and 
from  that  time  until  his  death  he  was,  physically, 

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Writers  of  Verse 

"  a  man  in  ruins."  Mentally,  he  was  as  alert  and 
virile  as  ever. 

He  was  given  a  clerical  position  in  one  of  the  de 
partments  at  Washington  after  that,  remaining 
there  until,  in  1873,  an  attack  of  paralysis  incapa 
citated  him  even  for  clerical  labor.  Meanwhile  he 
had  issued  his  poems  of  the  war,  under  the  title 
"  Drum-Taps,"  and  had  softened  some  hostile  hearts 
by  the  two  noble  tributes  to  Lincoln  there  included, 
"  O  Captain,  my  Captain !  "  and  "  When  Lilacs  last 
in  the  Dooryard  Bloom'd."  But  his  poetry  brought 
him  no  income  and,  for  a  time,  after  his  removal  to 
Camden,  ]STew  Jersey,  where  the  remainder  of  his 
life  was  to  be  passed,  he  was  in  absolute  want. 
Friends  increased,  however;  his  poems  were  re-issued, 
and  his  last  years  were  spent  in  the  midst  of  a 
circle  of  disciples,  who  hailed  Whitman  as  a  seer  and 
prophet  and  were  guilty  of  other  fatuities  which 
made  the  judicious  grieve  and  did  much  to  keep  them 
alienated  from  the  poet's  work. 

Since  his  death,  his  fame  has  become  established 
on  a  firmer  basis  than  hysterical  adulation;  but  it  is 
yet  too  soon  to  attempt  to  judge  him,  to  say  what 
his  ultimate  rank  will  be.  It  seems  probable  that  it 
will  be  a  high  one,  and  it  is  possible  that,  centuries 
hence,  the  historian  of  American  letters  will  start 
with  Whitman  as  the  first  exponent  of  an  original 
and  democratic  literature,  disregarding  all  that  has 
gone  before  as  merely  imitative  of  Europe. 

Of  our  lesser  poets,  only  a  few  need  be  mentioned 
here.  Bayard  Taylor,  born  in  Pennsylvania  in  1825, 

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of  Quaker  stock  and  reared  in  the  tenets  of  that 
sect,  at  one  time  loomed  large  in  American  letters, 
but  it  is  doubtful  whether  anything  of  his  has  the 
quality  of  permanency.  His  personality  was  a  pic 
turesque  and  fascinating  one  and  his  life  interesting 
and  romantic. 

A  poor  boy,  burning  with  the  itch  to  write  and 
especially  to  travel;  at  the  age  of  nineteen  making 
his  way  to  England,  and  from  there  to  Germany; 
spending  two  years  in  Europe,  enduring  hardships, 
living  with  the  common  people ;  and  finally  returning 
home  to  find  that  his  letters  to  the  newspapers  had 
been  read  with  interest  and  had  won  a  considerable 
audience — these  were  the  first  steps  in  his  struggle 
for  recognition.  He  collected  his  letters  into  a  book 
called  "  Views  Afoot,"  which  at  once  became  widely 
popular,  and  his  reputation  was  made. 

But  it  was  a  reputation  as  a  reporter  and  traveller, 
and  Taylor,  much  as  he  despised  it,  was  never  able 
to  get  away  from  it.  He  became,  perforce,  a  sort 
of  official  traveller  for  the  American  people,  jour 
neyed  in  California,  in  the  Orient,  in  Eussia,  Lap 
land — in  most  of  the  out-of-the-way  corners  of  the 
world — and  his  books  of  travel  were  uniformly 
interesting  and  successful.  They  do  not  attract  to 
day,  not,  as  Park  Benjamin  put  it,  because  Taylor 
travelled  more  and  saw  less  than  any  other  man  who 
ever  lived,  but  because  they  lack  the  charm  of  style, 
depth  of  thought,  and  keenness  of  observation  which 
the  present  generation  has  come  to  expect. 

During  all  this  time,  Taylor  was  struggling  with 
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Writers  of  Verse 

pathetic  earnestness  for  recognition  as  a  novelist  and 
poet,  but  with  poor  measure  of  success.  His  norels 
were  crude  and  amateurish,  and  have  long  since 
become  negligible;  but  his  verse  is  somewhat  more 
important.  His  travels  in  the  East  furnished  him 
material  for  his  "  Poems  of  the  Orient/'  which  rep 
resent  him  at  his  best. 

His  ambition,  however,  was  to  write  a  great  epic; 
but  for  this  he  lacked  both  intellectual  and  emotional 
equipment,  and  his  attempts  in  this  field  were  virtual 
failures.  These  failures  were  to  him  most  tragic; 
not  only  that,  but  he  found  himself  financially  em 
barrassed,  and  was  forced  to  turn  to  such  hack  work 
as  the  writing  of  school  histories  in  order  to  gain 
a  livelihood.  But  his  friends,  of  whom  he  had  always 
a  wide  circle,  secured  him  the  mission  to  Germany, 
and  he  entered  on  his  duties  in  high  spirits — only 
to  die  suddenly  one  morning  while  sitting  in  his 
library  at  Berlin.  A  generous,  impulsive  and  warm 
hearted  man,  Bayard  Taylor  will  be  remembered  for 
•what  he  was,  rather  than  for  what  he  did. 

Two  other  poets,  whose  deaths  occurred  not  many 
months  ago,  have  made  noteworthy  contributions  to 
American  letters — Edmund  Clarence  Stedman  and 
Thomas  Bailey  Aldrich.  Of  the  two,  Aldrich  was  by 
far  the  better  craftsman,  his  verse  possessing  a  wit, 
a  daintiness  and  perfection  of  finish  which  sets  it 
apart  in  a  class  almost  by  itself.  In  prose,  too, 
Aldrich  wrote  attractively,  but  always  rather  with 
the  air  of  a  dilettante,  and  without  the  depth  and 
passion  of  genius.  Stedman  also  possessed  wit  and 

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A  Guide  to  Biography 

polish,  though  in  less  degree,  and  the  verse  of  both 
these  men  is  delightful  reading. 

More  recent  still  has  been  the  death  of  a  man 
whose  verse  ranks  with  that  of  either  Stedman  or 
Aldrich  —  Eichard  Watson  Gilder.  Some  of  his 
lyrics  are  very  beautiful,  but  they  appeal  to  the 
intellect  rather  than  to  the  heart.  Perhaps  for  this 
reason,  as  well  as  for  a  certain  lack  of  substance  and 
virility,  his  verse  has  never  had  a  wide  appeal. 

Two  men  whose  names  have  become  household 
words  because  of  their  delightful  verses  for  and 
about  children  are  Eugene  Field  and  James  Whit- 
comb  Riley.  Field  is  the  greater  of  the  two,  for  he 
possessed  a  depth  of  feeling  and  insight  which  is 
lacking  in  Riley.  Few  lyrics  have  been  more  widely 
popular  than  his  "  Little  Boy  Blue  "  and  "  Dutch 
Lullaby";  while  Riley's  "  Little  Orphant  Annie" 
and  "  The  Raggedy  Man  "  are  equally  well  known. 

Alice  and  Phoebe  Gary  are  remembered  for  a  few 
simply- written  lyrics ;  Julia  Ward  Howe's  "  Battle- 
Hymn  of  the  Republic  "  lives  as  the  worthiest  piece 
of  verse  evoked  by  the  Civil  War;  and  Joaquin 
Miller  is  known  for  a  certain  rude  power  in  song; 
but  none  of  them  is  of  sufficient  importance  to  de 
mand  extended  study. 

It  will  be  noted  that,  among  all  the  poets  who 
have  been  mentioned  here,  not  one  was  distinctively 
of  the  South.  Poe's  youth  was  spent  in  Richmond, 
but  he  was  in  no  sense  Southern.  Indeed,  the  South 
has  only  three  names  to  offer  of  even  minor  im- 

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Writers  of  Verse 

portance — Sidney  Lanier,  Henry  Timrod,  and  Paul 
Hamilton  Hayne.  None  of  these  men  produced  any 
thing  of  the  first  order,  and  much  of  their  verse  is 
marred  by  amateurishness  and  want  of  finish — the 
result,  in  the  first  place,  of  defective  training,  and,  in 
the  second  place,  of  an  incapacity  for  taking  pains, 
of  a  habit  which  relied  too  much  on  "  inspiration  " 
and  too  little  on  intellectual  effort. 

For  verse,  to  be  perfect,  must  be  polished  like  a 
diamond,  slowly  and  carefully,  until  every  facet 
sparkles.  This  means  that  the  right  word  or  phrase 
must  be  searched  for  until  it  is  found.  Perhaps  you 
have  read  Mr.  Barrie's  inimitable  story  "  Senti 
mental  Tommy,"  and  you  will  remember  how  Tom 
my  failed  to  write  the  prize  essay  because  he  couldn't 
think  of  the  right  word,  and  would  be  satisfied  with 
no  other.  Well,  that  is  the  spirit.  Somebody  has 
said  that  "  easy  writing  makes  hard  reading/'  and 
this  is  especially  true  of  poetry.  Inspiration  doesn't 
extend  to  technic — that  must  be  acquired,  like  any 
art,  with  infinite  pains. 

Of  the  three  poets,  Lanier,  Timrod,  and  Hayne, 
Lanier  was  by  far  the  greatest,  and  has  even  be 
come,  in  a  small  way,  the  centre  of  a  cult;  but  his 
voice,  while  often  pure  and  sweet,  lacks  the  strength 
needed  to  carry  it  down  the  ages.  He  is  like  a  little 
brook  making  beautiful  some  meadow  or  strip  of 
woodland;  but  only  mighty  rivers  reach  the  ocean. 
Lanier  is  memorable  not  so  much  for  his  work  as  for 
the  gallant  fight  he  made  against  the  consumption 
which  he  had  contracted  as  the  result  of  exposure  in 

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the  Confederate  army  during  the  Civil  War.  The 
war  also  played  a  disastrous  part  in  the  lives  of  both 
Hayne  and  Timrod,  for  it  impoverished  both  of  them, 
and  did  much  to  hasten  the  latter's  death. 

Timrod,  too,  rose  occasionally  to  noble  utterance, 
but  his  voice  is  fainter  and  his  talent  more  slender 
than  Lanier's.  His  life  was  a  painful  one,  marred 
by  poverty  and  disease,  and  he  died  at  the  age  of 
thirty-eight.  Hayne's  work  is  even  less  important, 
for  he  did  not,  like  Timrod  and  Lanier,  touch  an 
occasional  height  of  inspired  utterance.  His  name 
is  cherished  in  his  native  state  of  South  Carolina,  and 
in  Georgia,  where  his  last  years  were  spent;  but  his 
poems  are  little  read  elsewhere. 

Timrod  and  Hayne  were  both  born  at  Charleston, 
South  Carolina,  as  was  a  third  poet  and  novelist,  who, 
in  his  day,  loomed  far  larger  than  either  of  them, 
but  who  is  now  almost  forgotten,  except  by  students 
of  American  literature — "William  Gilmore  Simms. 
Few  American  writers  have  produced  so  much — 
eighteen  volumes  of  verse,  three  dramas,  thirty-five 
novels  and  volumes  of  short  stories,  and  about  as 
many  more  books  of  history,  biography  and  miscel 
lany — and  none,  of  like  prominence  in  his  day,  has 
dropped  more  completely  out  of  sight.  In  common 
with  the  other  Southern  writers  we  have  mentioned, 
Simms  lacked  self-restraint  and  the  power  of  self- 
criticism. 

Genius  has  been  defined  as  the  capacity  for  tak 
ing  pains;  and  perhaps  it  is  because  Southern  writers 
have  lacked  this  capacity  that  none  of  them  has 

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Writers  of  Verse 

proved  to  be  a  genius.  Elbert  Hubbard  says  that 
Simms  "  courted  oblivion — and  won  her  "  by  return 
ing  to  the  South  after  having  achieved  some  success 
in  the  North;  but  it  is  doubtful  if  this  had  anything 
to  do  with  it.  The  truth  is  that  Simms' s  work  has 
lost  its  appeal  because  of  its  inherent  defects,  and 
there  is  no  chance  that  its  popularity  will  ever  be  re 
gained.  And  yet,  while  his  verse  is  negligible — al 
though  he  always  thought  himself  a  greater  poet  than 
novelist — some  of  his  tales  of  the  Carolinas  and  the 
Southwest  possess  a  rude  power  and  interest  deserv 
ing  of  a  better  fate.  Certainly  Simms  seems  to  have 
been  the  best  imaginative  writer  the  antebellum 
South  produced. 

American  imaginative  literature  to-day  resembles 
a  lofty  plateau  rather  than  a  mountain  range.  It 
shows  a  high  level  of  achievement,  but  no  mighty 
peaks.  Novelists  and  poets  alike  have  learned  how 
to  use  their  tools ;  they  work  with  conviction — but  in 
clay  rather  than  in  marble.  In  other  words,  they  work 
without  what  we  call  inspiration;  they  have  talent, 
but  not  genius.  This  is,  perhaps,  partly  the  fault  of 
the  age,  which  has  come  to  place  so  high  a  value  upon 
literary  form  that  the  quality  of  the  material  is  often 
lost  sight  of.  Let  us  hope  that  some  day  a  genius  will 
arise  who  will  be  great  enough  to  disregard  form  and 
to  strike  out  his  own  path  across  the  domain  of  let 
ters. 

Meanwhile,  it  is  safe  to  advise  boys  and  girls  to 
spend  their  time  over  the  old  things  rather  than  over 
the  new  ones.  There  is  so  much  good  literature  in 

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the  world  that  there  is  really  no  excuse  for  reading 
bad,  and  the  latest  novel  will  not  give  half  the  solid 
entertainment  to  be  got  from  scores  of  the  older  ones. 
One  of  the  most  valuable  and  delightful  things  in  the 
world  is  the  power  to  appreciate  good  literature.  To 
have  worthy  "  friends  on  the  shelf,"  in  the  shape  of 
great  books,  is  to  insure  oneself  against  loneliness  and 
ennui. 

SUMMARY 

BRYANT,,  WILLIAM  CULLEN.  Born  at  Cummington, 
Massachusetts,  November  3,  1794;  studied  at  Williams 
College,  1810-11;  admitted  to  the  bar,  1815;  pub 
lished  "  Thanatopsis,"  1816;  editor-in-chief  New  York 
Evening  Post,  1829 ;  published  first  collection  of  poems, 
1821,  and  others  from  time  to  time  until  his  death,  at 
New  York  City,  June  12,  1878. 

LONGFELLOW,  HENRY  WADSWORTH.  Born  at  Port 
land,  Maine,  February  27,  1807;  graduated  at  Bowdoin 
College,  1825;  travelled  in  Europe,  1826-29;  professor 
of  modern  languages  at  Bowdoin,  1829-35;  professor 
of  modern  languages  and  belles  lettres  at  Harvard, 
1836-54;  published  "Voices  of  the  Night/'  1839; 
"  Ballads  and  Other  Poems/'  1841;  "Poems  on  Slav 
ery,"  1842;  and  many  other  collections  of  his  poems, 
until  his  death  at  Cambridge,  Massachusetts,  March. 
24,  1882. 

WHITTIER,  JOHN  GREENLEAF.  Born  at  Haverhill, 
Massachusetts,  December  17,  1807;  attended  Haverhill 
Academy;  edited  "American  Manufacturer/'  at  Bos 
ton,  1829 ;  edited  the  Haverhill  Gazette,  1830 ;  became 

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Writers  of  Verse 

secretary  of  the  American  Anti-Slavery  Society,  1836; 
member  of  Massachusetts  legislature,  1835-36;  settled 
at  Amesbury,  Massachusetts,  1840;  published  "Legends 
of  New  England,"  1831;  "Moll  Pitcher,"  1832;  and 
many  other  collections  of  his  poems  until  his  death  at 
Hampton  Falls,  New  Hampshire,  September  7,  1892. 

HOLMES,  OLIVER  WENDELL.  Born  at  Cambridge, 
Massachusetts,  August  29,  1809;  professor  of  anatomy 
and  physiology,  Harvard  Medical  School,  1847-82; 
published  "Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast  Table,"  1858; 
"  Elsie  Venner,"  1861 ;  "  Songs  in  Many  Keys,"  1861 ; 
and  other  collections  of  poems  and  essays ;  died  at  Cam 
bridge,  October  7,  1894. 

LOWELL,  JAMES  EUSSELL.  Born  at  Cambridge, 
Massachusetts,  February  22,  1819;  graduated  at  Har 
vard,  1838 ;  professor  of  belles  lettres  at  Harvard,  1855 ; 
editor  Atlantic  Monthly.,  1857-62;  editor  North  Ameri 
can  Review,  1863-72;  minister  to  Spain,  1877-80;  min 
ister  to  Great  Britain,  1880-85;  published  "A  Year's 
Life,"  1841;  "Vision  of  Sir  Launfal,"  1845;  "A 
Fable  for  Critics,"  1848;  "The  Biglow  Papers,"  1848; 
and  many  other  collections  of  essays,  criticisms,  and 
poems;  died  at  Cambridge,  August  12,  1891. 

POE,  EDGAR  ALLAN.  Born  at  Boston,  January  19, 
1809;  entered  University  of  Virginia,  1826;  ran  away 
from  home,  1827 ;  published  "  Tamerlane  and  Other 
Poems,  by  a  Bostonian,"  1827;  enlisted  in  the  army 
as  Edgar  A.  Perry,  rising  to  rank  of  sergeant-major, 
1829;  entered  West  Point,  July  1,  1830;  dismissed, 
March  6,  1831;  married  Virginia  Clemm,  1835,  who 
died  in  1847;  published  "  Poems,"  1831;  "  Tales  of  the 

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Grotesque  and  Arabesque/'   1840;  died  at  Baltimore, 
October  7,  1849. 

WHITMAN,  WALT  OR  WALTER.  Born  at  West  Hills, 
Long  Island,  May  31,  1819;  a  printer,  carpenter,  and 
journalist  in  early  life;  volunteered  as  army  nurse, 
1861;  seized  with  hospital  malaria,  1864;  held  govern 
ment  position  at  Washington,  1864-73;  disabled  by 
paralysis  and  removed  to  Camden,  New  Jersey,  where 
he  died,  March  26,  1892.  "Leaves  of  Grass,"  pub 
lished  originally  in  1855,  was  many  times  revised,  a 
final  edition  appearing  in  1892. 

TAYLOR,  BAYARD.  Born  at  Kennett  Square,  Chester 
County,  Pennsylvania,  January  11,  1825;  apprenticed 
to  a  printer,  1842;  travelled  on  foot  through  Europe, 
1844-46;  in  Egypt,  Asia  Minor,  and  Syria,  1851-52; 
in  India,  China,  and  Japan,  1852-53;  secretary  of 
legation  at  St.  Petersburg,  1862-63;  minister  to  Ber 
lin,  1878;  died  at  Berlin,  December  19,  1878.  He  pub 
lished  collections  of  poems  and  travel  letters. 

STEDMAN,  EDMUND  CLARENCE.  Born  at  Hartford, 
Connecticut,  October  8,  1833 ;  entered  Yale,  1839,  leav 
ing  in  junior  year ;  was  correspondent  New  York  World, 
1861-63;  later  became  stockbroker  in  New  York  City, 
retiring  only  a  short  time  before  his  death  in  New 
York,  January  18,  1908.  Published  several  collections 
of  poems. 

ALDRICH,  THOMAS  BAILEY.  Born  at  Portsmouth, 
New  Hampshire,  November  11,  1836;  editor  of  Every 
Saturday,  1870-74;  editor  of  The  Atlantic  Monthly, 
1881-90;  published  « Bells,"  1855;  "Ballad  of  Baby 
Bell,"  1856;  and  many  other  collections  of  poetry,  to- 

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Writers  of  Verse 

gether   with   several   novels    and   collections   of   short 
stories;  died  March  19,  1907. 

FIELD,  EUGENE.  Born  at  St.  Louis,  Missouri,  Sep 
tember  2,  1850;  began  newspaper  work  at  age  of  twen 
ty-three,  and  ten  years  later  became  associated  with  the 
Chicago  Daily  News,  where  most  of  his  work  appeared ; 
his  first  book  of  verse,  "A  Little  Book  of  Western 
Verse,"  was  published  in  1889,  and  a  number  of  others 
followed;  died  at  Chicago,  Illinois,  November  4,  1895. 

EILEY,  JAMES  WHITCOMB.  Born  at  Greenfield,  In 
diana,  1853;  entered  journalism  at  Indianapolis,  1873; 
wrote  first  verses,  187-5 ;  first  book  of  verse,  "  The  Old 
Swimmin'-Hole  and  'Leven  More  Poems/'  published  in 
1883 ;  numerous  volumes  since  then, 

LANIER,  SIDNEY.  Born  at  Macon,  Georgia,  Febru 
ary  3,  1842;  served  in  Confederate  Army,  and  suffered 
exposure  which  resulted  in  consumption;  studied  and 
practised  law  till  1873;  then  decided  to  devote  life  to 
music  and  poetry;  played  first  flute  in  the  Peabody 
Symphony  Orchestra  at  Baltimore;  lecturer  on  English 
literature  at  Johns  Hopkins  University,  1879-81 ;  com 
plete  poems  published  1881 ;  died  at  Lynn,  North  Caro 
lina,  September  7,  1881. 

TIMROD,  HENRY.  Born  at  Charleston,  South  Caro 
lina,  December  8,  1829;  educated  at  the  University  of 
Georgia,  studied  law  and  supported  himself  as  a  private 
tutor  until  the  Civil  War;  war  correspondent  and  then 
assistant  editor  of  The  South  Carolinian,  at  Columbia, 
until  Sherman  burned  the  town;  died  at  Columbia, 
South  Carolina,  October  6,  1867;  his  poems,  edited  by 
Paul  Hamilton  Hayne,  published  1873. 

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HAYNE,  PAUL  HAMILTON.  Born  at  Charleston,  South 
Carolina,  January  1,  1830 ;  graduated  at  the  University 
of  South  Carolina,  edited  Russell's  Magazine  and  the 
Literary  Gazette,  and  served  for  a  time  in  the  Confed 
erate  Army;  first  poems  published  1855;  complete  edi 
tion,  1882;  died  near  Augusta,  Georgia,  July  6,  1886. 

SIMMS,  WILLIAM  GILMORE.  Born  at  Charleston, 
South  Carolina,  April  17,  1806;  admitted  to  bar,  1827, 
but  abandoned  law  for  literature  and  journalism;  first 
poems  published  1827;  resided  at  Hingham,  Massa 
chusetts,  1832-33,  where  longest  poem,  "  Atalantis," 
was  written;  first  novel,  "Martin  Faber,"  published 
1833,  and  followed  by  many  others;  returned  to  South 
Carolina,  1833,  and  died  at  Charleston,  June  11,  1870. 


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CHAPTER   IV 
PAINTERS 

TF  background  and  tradition  are  needed  for  litera- 
-*•  ture,  they  are  even  more  needed  for  art,  and  it  is 
curiously  worth  noting  that  the  background  and  tra 
ditions  of  England  did  not  serve  for  her  child  across 
the  sea.  In  both  literature  and  art,  so  far  as  vital  and 
significant  achievement  is  concerned,  the  young  na 
tion  had  to  find  itself,  and,  starting  from  a  rude  and 
rough  beginning,  work  its  way  upward  of  its  own 
strength.  Perhaps  in  no  other  way  may  the  youth 
of  America  be  so  completely  realized  as  by  the 
thought  that  all  of  real  importance  in  both  literature 
and  art  which  she  can  boast  has  been  produced 
within  the  past  ninety  years — little  more  than  the 
three  score  years  and  ten  which  the  Psalmist  assigned 
as  the  span  of  a  single  life. 

We  do  not  mean  to  say  that  European  influence  is 
not  plainly  to  be  traced  in  both  our  art  and  literature. 
There  is  a  family  resemblance,  so  to  speak,  as  between 
a  child  and  its  parents,  and  yet  the  child  has  an  in 
dividuality  of  its  own.  In  literature,  Cooper,  Poe, 
Hawthorne,  Longfellow,  Whitman  are  distinctively 
American;  and,  as  we  shall  find,  so  are  our  masters 
of  painting  and  sculpture. 

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American  art  begins  with  John  Singleton  Copley. 
There  had  been  daubers  before  him,  as  there  were 
after,  but  Copley  was  the  first  man  born  in  America 
who  produced  paintings  which  the  world  still  contem 
plates  with  pleasure.  Copley  was  born  in  Boston  in 
1737,  his  father  dying  shortly  afterwards,  and  his 
mother  supporting  herself  by  keeping  a  tobacco  shop. 
About  1746  she  married  again,  most  fortunately  for 
her  son,  for  her  second  husband  was  Peter  Pelham, 
a  mezzotint  engraver  of  considerable  merit,  who  gave 
the  boy  lessons  in  drawing.  He  proved  an  apt  and 
precocious  pupil,  and  by  the  time  he  had  reached  sev 
enteen  had  executed  a  number  of  portraits. 

His  reputation  steadily  increased,  and  his  income 
from  his  work  was  so  satisfactory  that  he  hesitated 
to  try  his  fortunes  in  the  larger  field  of  London. 
Finally,  in  1774,  he  sailed  for  England,  and  in  the 
next  year  sent  for  his  family  to  join  him  there.  The 
opening  of  the  Revolution  persuaded  him  to  staj  in 
England,  as  there  would  be  no  demand  for  his  work 
in  America  in  so  tumultuous  a  time.  In  London 
his  talents  brought  him  ample  patronage,  his  income 
enabled  him  to  live  the  stately  and  dignified  life  he 
loved,  so  that,  when  the  Revolution  ended,  there 
seemed  no  reason  why  he  should  abandon  it  for  the 
crudities  of  Boston.  He  therefore  continued  in 
London  until  the  end  of  his  life,  which  came  in 
1815. 

Copley  was  a  laborious  and  painstaking  craftsman, 
setting  down  what  he  saw  upon  canvas  with  uncom 
promising  sincerity.  He  worked  very  slowly  and 

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many  stories  are  told  of  how  he  tried  the  patience  of 
his  sitters.  The  result  was  a  series  of  portraits  which 
preserve  the  very  spirit  of  the  age — serious,  self- 
reliant  and  capable,  pompous  and  lacking  humor. 
His  later  work  has  an  atmosphere  and  repose  which 
his  early  work  lacks,  but  it  is  less  important  to  Amer 
ica.  His  early  portraits,  which  hang  on  the  walls 
of  so  many  Boston  homes,  and  which  Oliver  Wendell 
Holmes  called  the  titles  of  nobility  of  the  old  Bos 
ton  families,  are  priceless  documents  of  history. 

Copley  was  an  artist  from  choice  rather  than  ne 
cessity;  he  followed  painting  because  it  assured  him 
a  good  livelihood,  and  he  was  a  patient  and  pains 
taking  craftsman.  His  life  was  serene  and  happy; 
he  was  without  the  tribulations,  as  he  seems  to  have 
been  without  the  enthusiasms  of  the  great  artist, 
l^ot  so  with  his  most  famous  contemporary,  Benjamin 
West,  whose  life  was  filled  to  overflowing  with  the 
contrast  and  picturesqueness  which  Copley's  lacked. 

West  was  born  in  1738  at  a  little  Pennsylvania 
frontier  settlement.  His  parents  were  Quakers,  and 
to  the  rigor  and  simplicity  of  frontier  life  were 
added  those  of  that  sect.  But  even  these  handicaps 
could  not  turn  the  boy  aside  from  his  vocation,  for 
he  was  a  born  painter,  if  there  ever  was  one.  At 
the  age  of  six  he  tried  to  draw,  with  red  and  black 
ink,  a  likeness  of  a  baby  he  had  been  set  to  watch ;  a 
year  later,  a  party  of  friendly  Indians,  amused  by 
some  sketches  of  birds  and  leaves  he  showed  them, 
taught  him  how  to  prepare  the  red  and  yellow  colors 
which  they  used  on  their  ornaments.  His  mother  f  ur- 

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nished  some  indigo,  brushes  were  secured  by  clipping 
the  family  cat — no  doubt  greatly  to  its  disgust — and 
•with  these  crude  materials  he  set  to  work. 

His  success  won  him  the  present  of  a  box  of 
paints  from  a  relative  in  Philadelphia.  With  that 
treasure  the  boy  lived  and  slept,  and  his  mother, 
finally  discovering  that  he  was  running  away  from 
school,  found  him  in  the  garret  with  a  picture  before 
him  which  she  refused  to  let  him  finish  lest  he 
should  spoil  it.  That  painting  was  preserved  to  be 
exhibited  sixty-six  years  later. 

The  boy's  talent  was  so  evident,  and  his  determi 
nation  to  be  a  painter  so  fixed,  that  his  parents  finally 
overcame  their  scruples  against  an  occupation  which 
they  considered  vain  and  useless,  and  sent  him  to 
Philadelphia.  There  he  lived  as  frugally  as  possible, 
saving  his  money  for  a  trip  to  Italy,  and  finally,  at 
the  age  of  twenty-two,  set  sail  for  Europe. 

His  success  there  was  immediate.  He  gained 
friends  in  the  most  influential  circles,  spent  three 
years  in  study  in  Italy,  and  going  to  London  in 
1764,  received  so  many  commissions  that  he  decided 
to  live  there  permanently.  He  wrote  home  for  his 
father  to  join  him,  and  to  bring  with  him  a  Miss 
Shewell,  to  whom  "West  was  betrothed.  He  also 
wrote  to  the  young  lady,  stating  that  his  father  would 
sail  at  a  certain  time,  and  asking  her  to  join  him. 
The  letter  fell  into  the  hands  of  Miss  ShewelFs 
brother,  who  objected  to  West  for  some  reason,  and 
who  promptly  locked  the  girl  in  her  room.  Three 
friends  of  West's  concluded  that  this  outrage  upon 

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Painters 

true  love  was  not  to  be  endured,  smuggled  a  rope- 
ladder  to  her,  and  got  her  out  of  the  house  and 
safely  on  board  the  vessel.  These  three  friends 
were  Benjamin  Franklin,  Francis  Hopkinson  and 
"William  White,  the  latter  the  first  Bishop  of  the 
American  Episcopal  Church,  and  the  exploit  was  one 
which  they  were  always  proud  to  remember.  Miss 
Shewell  reached  London  safely  and  the  lovers  were 
happily  married. 

Meanwhile  West's  success  had  been  given  a  sud 
den  impetus  by  his  introduction  to  King  George  III. 
The  two  men  became  lifelong  friends,  and  the  King 
gave  him  commission  after  commission,  culminating 
in  a  command  to  decorate  the  Eoyal  Chapel  at  "Wind 
sor.  His  first  reverse  came  when  the  King's  rnind 
began  to  fail.  His  commissions  were  cancelled  and 
his  pensions  stopped.  He  was  deposed  from  the 
Presidency  of  the  Koyal  Academy,  which  he  had 
founded,  and  was  for  a  time  in  needy  circumstances; 
but  the  tide  soon  turned,  and  his  last  years  were 
marked  by  the  production  of  a  number  of  great 
paintings.  He  died  at  the  age  of  eighty-two,  and 
was  buried  in  St.  Paul's  Cathedral  with  splendid 
ceremonies.  So  ended  one  of  the  most  remarkable 
careers  in  history. 

West  was,  perhaps,  more  notable  as  a  man  than 
as  an  artist,  for  his  fame  as  a  painter  has  steadily 
declined.  His  greatest  service  to  art  was  the  ex 
ample  he  set  of  painting  historical  groups  in  the 
costume  of  the  period  instead  of  in  the  vestments 
of  the  early  Eomans,  as  had  been  the  custom.  This 

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A  Guide  to  Biography 

innovation  was  made  by  him  in  his  picture  of  the 
death  of  General  Wolfe,  and  created  no  little  dis 
turbance.  His  friends,  including  Reynolds,  protested 
against  such  a  desecration  of  tradition;  even  the 
King  questioned  him,  and  West  replied  that  the 
painter  should  be  bound  by  truth  as  well  as  the  his 
torian,  and  to  represent  a  group  of  English  soldiers 
in  the  year  1758  as  dressed  in  classic  costume  was 
absurd.  After  the  picture  was  completed,  Reynolds 
was  the  first  to  declare  that  West  had  won,  and  that 
his  picture  would  occasion  a  revolution  in  art — as, 
indeed,  it  did. 

It  is  difficult  to  understand  the  habit  of  thought 
which  insisted  on  clothing  great  men  in  garments 
they  could  never  by  any  possibility  have  worn,  yet 
it  persisted  until  a  comparatively  late  day.  The  most 
famous  example  in  this  country  is  Greenough's  statue 
of  Washington,  just  outside  the  Capitol.  One  looks 
at  it  with  a  certain  sense  of  shock,  for  the  Father 
of  His  Country  is  sitting  half-naked,  in  a  great  arm 
chair,  with  some  drapery  over  his  legs,  and  a  fold 
hanging  over  one  shoulder.  We  shall  have  occasion 
in  the  next  chapter  to  speak  of  it  and  of  its  maker. 

Another  of  West's  services  to  art  was  the  whole 
hearted  way  in  which  he  extended  a  helping  hand 
to  any  who  needed  it.  He  was  always  willing  to 
give  such  instruction  as  he  could,  and  among  his 
pupils  were  at  least  four  men  who  added  not  a  little 
to  American  art — Charles  Willson  Peale,  Gilbert 
Stuart,  John  Trumbull,  and  Thomas  Sully. 

Peale  was  born  in  Maryland  in  1741,  and  was, 
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Painters 

among  other  things,  a  saddler,  a  coach-maker,  a 
clock-maker  and  a  silversmith.  He  finally  decided  to 
add  painting  to  his  other  accomplishments,  so  he 
secured  some  painting  materials  and  a  book  of  in 
structions  and  set  to  work.  In  1770,  a  number  of 
gentlemen  of  Annapolis  furnished  him  with  enough 
money  to  go  to  England,  a  loan  which  he  promised 
to  repay  with  pictures  upon  his  return.  West  re 
ceived  him  kindly,  and  when  Peale's  money  gave  out, 
as  it  soon  did,  welcomed  him  into  his  own  house. 
Peale  remained  in  London  for  four  years,  returning 
to  America  in  time  to  join  Washington  as  a  captain 
of  volunteers,  and  to  take  part  in  the  battles  of 
Trenton  and  Germantown. 

After  the  war  he  continued  painting,  but,  in  1801, 
his  mind,  always  alert  for  new  experiences,  was  led 
away  in  a  strange  direction.  The  bones  of  a  mam 
moth  were  discovered  in  Ulster  County,  New  York, 
and  Peale  secured  possession  of  them,  had  them 
taken  to  Philadelphia,  and  started  a  museum.  It 
rapidly  increased  in  size,  for  all  sorts  of  curiosities 
poured  in  upon  him,  and  he  began  a  series  of  lec 
tures  on  natural  history,  which,  whether  learned 
or  not,  proved  so  interesting  that  large  and  dis 
tinguished  audiences  gathered  to  hear  him.  In  1805, 
he  founded  the  Pennsylvania  Academy  of  the  Fine 
Arts,  the  oldest  and  most  flourishing  institution  of 
the  kind  in  the  country.  He  lived  to  a  hale  old 
age,  never  having  known  sickness,  and  dying  as  the 
result  of  incautious  exposure.  Like  West,  his  life 
is  more  interesting  than  his  work,  for  while  he 

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painted  fairly  good  portraits,  they  were  the  work 
rather  of  a  skilled  craftsman  than  of  an  artist. 

The  second  of  West's  pupils  whom  we  have  men 
tioned,  Gilbert  Stuart,  was  by  far  the  greatest  of  the 
earlier  artists.  He  was  born  near  [Newport,  R.  I.,  in 
1755,  his  father  being  a  Jacobite  refugee  from  Scot 
land.  He  began  to  paint  at  an  early  age,  worked 
faithfully  at  drawing,  and  finally,  at  the  age  of  nine 
teen,  began  portrait  painting  in  earnest.  One  of  his 
first  pictures  was  a  striking  example  of  a  remarkable 
characteristic,  the  power  of  visual  memory,  which  he 
retained  through  his  whole  life.  His  grandmother 
had  died  five  or  six  years  before,  but  he  painted  a 
portrait  of  her,  producing  so  striking  a  likeness  that 
it  immediately  brought  him  orders  for  others.  But 
Newport  had  grown  distasteful  to  him,  and  in  1775, 
he  started  for  London. 

How  he  got  there  is  not  certainly  known,  but  get 
there  he  did,  without  money  or  friends,  or  much 
hope  of  making  either,  and  for  three  years  lived  a 
precarious  life,  earning  a  little  money,  borrowing 
what  he  could,  twice  imprisoned  for  debt,  and  with  it 
all  so  gay  and  brilliant  and  talented  that  those  he 
wronged  most  loved  him  most.  Finally,  he  was  in 
troduced  to  Benjamin  West,  and  found  in  him  an 
invaluable  friend  and  patron.  For  nearly  four  years, 
Stuart  worked  as  West's  student  and  assistant, 
steadily  improving  in  drawing,  developing  a  tech 
nique  of  astonishing  merit,  and,  more  than  that,  one 
that  was  all  his  own. 

His  portraits  soon  attracted  attention,  and  at  the 
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Painters 

end  of  a  few  years,  he  was  earning  a  large  income. 
But  he  squandered  it  so  recklessly  that  he  was  finally 
forced  to  flee  to  Ireland  to  escape  his  creditors.  They 
pursued  him,  threw  him  into  prison,  and  the  legend 
is  that  he  painted  most  of  the  Irish  aristocracy  in 
his  cell  in  the  Dublin  jail. 

At  last,  in  1792,  he  returned  to  America,  animated 
by  a  desire  to  paint  a  portrait  of  Washington.  Ar 
rangements  for  a  sitting  were  made,  but  it  is  related 
that  Stuart,  although  he  had  painted  many  famous 
men  and  was  at  ease  in  most  society,  found  himself 
strangely  embarrassed  in  Washington's  presence. 
The  President  was  kindly  and  courteous,  but  the 
portrait  was  a  failure.  He  tried  again,  and  produced 
the  portrait  which  remains  to  this  day  the  accepted 
likeness  of  the  First  American.  You  will  find  it  as 
the  frontispiece  to  "  Men  of  Action,"  and  it  is  worth 
examining  closely,  for  it  is  an  example  of  art  rarely 
surpassed,  as  well  as  a  remarkable  portrait  of  our 
most  remarkable  citizen. 

Gilbert  Stuart  still  holds  his  place  among  the 
greatest  of  American  portrait  painters.  His  heads, 
painted  simply  and  without  artifice,  and  yet  with 
high  imagination,  are  unsurpassed;  they  possess  in 
sight,  they  accomplish  that  greatest  of  all  tasks,  the 
delineation  of  character.  Stuart's  portraits  —  as 
every  portrait  must,  to  be  truly  great — show  not  only 
how  his  sitters  looked  but  what  tliey  were.  Art  can 
accomplish  no  more  than  that. 

The  anecdotes  which  are  told  of  him  are  innumer 
able,  and  most  of  them  have  to  do  with  his  hot 

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temper,  which  grew  hotter  and  hotter  as  his  years 
increased  and  he  became  more  and  more  a  public 
character.  One  day,  a  loving  husband,  whose  wife 
Stuart  had  put  on  canvas  in  an  unusually  uncom 
promising  way,  complained  that  the  portrait  did  not 
do  her  justice. 

"  What  an  infernal  business  is  this  of  a  portrait 
painter,"  Stuart  cried,  at  last,  his  patience  giving 
way.  "  You  bring  him  a  potato  and  expect  him  to 
paint  you  a  peach!  " 

But  look  at  his  portrait  at  the  beginning  of  this 
chapter,  and  you  will  see  a  witty  and  kindly  old 
gentleman,  as  well  as  an  irascible  one. 

John  Trumbull  was  a  student  of  West's  at  the 
same  time  that  Stuart  was.  He  was  a  year  younger, 
and  was  a  son  of  that  Jonathan  Trumbull,  after 
wards  governor  of  Connecticut,  whose  title  of 
Brother  Jonathan,  given  him  by  Washington,  became 
afterwards  a  sort  of  national  nickname.  He  was  an 
infant  prodigy,  graduating  from  Harvard  at  an  age 
when  most  boys  were  entering,  and  afterwards  going 
to  Boston  to  take  lessons  from  Copley.  The  out 
break  of  the  Eevolution  stopped  his  studies;  he  en 
listed  in  the  army,  won  rapid  promotion,  and  finally 
resigned  in  a  huff  because  he  thought  his  commission 
as  colonel  incorrectly  dated. 

In  1780,  he  sailed  for  France,  on  his  way  to 
London,  met  Benjamin  Franklin  in  Paris  and  from 
him  secured  a  letter  of  introduction  to  Benjamin 
West,  who  welcomed  him  with  his  unfailing  cordial 
ity;  but  he  had  scarcely  commenced  his  studies  when 

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lie  was  arrested  and  thrown  into  prison.  The  reason 
was  the  arrest  and  execution  at  New  York  of  Major 
Andre,  who  was  captured  with  Benedict  Arnold's 
treasonable  correspondence  hidden  in  his  boot,  and 
who  was  hanged  as  a  spy.  Knowing  that  Trumbull 
Lad  been  an  officer  in  the  American  army,  and  anx 
ious  to  avenge  Andre's  death,  the  King  ordered  his 
arrest,  but  West  interceded  for  him  and  secured  his 
release  several  weeks  later. 

Warned  that  England  was  unsafe  for  him,  Trum 
bull  returned  to  America  and  remained  there  until 
after  the  close  of  the  Revolution.  The  beginning 
of  1784:  saw  him  again  in  London,  at  work  on  his 
two  famous  paintings,  "  The  Battle  of  Bunker  Hill " 
and  "  The  Death  of  General  Montgomery,"  and  from 
that  time  until  his  death  he  was  occupied  almost  ex 
clusively  with  the  painting  of  pictures  illustrating 
events  in  American  history  —  "  The  Surrender  of 
Cornwallis,"  "  The  Battle  of  Princeton,"  "  The  Cap 
ture  of  the  Hessians  at  Trenton,"  to  mention  only 
three.  In  1816  he  received  a  commission  to  paint 
four  of  the  eight  commemorative  pictures  in  the 
Capitol  at  Washington,  and  completed  the  last 
one  eight  years  later,  this  being  his  last  important 
work. 

Trumbull  is  in  no  respect  to  be  compared  with 
Gilbert  Stuart,  but  his  work  was  done  with  a  pains 
taking  accuracy  which  makes  it  valuable  as  a  histor 
ical  document.  For  the  personages  of  his  pictures 
he  painted  a  great  number  of  miniatures  from  life, 
which,  in  many  cases,  are  the  only  surviving  present- 

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merits  of  some  of  tlie  most  prominent  men  of  the 
time. 

After  Gilbert  Stuart,  Thomas  Sully  was  by  far 
the  greatest  of  the  men  who  studied  in  West's  studio. 
Stuart  aside,  there  was  no  American  painter  of  the 
day  to  equal  him.  He  was  born  in  England  in  1783, 
but  was  brought  to  this  country  by  his  parents  at 
the  age  of  nine.  The  Sullys  were  actors  of  some 
talent  and  secured  an  engagement  at  Charleston, 
South  Carolina,  and  there  the  boy  was  placed  first  in 
school,  and  then  in  the  office  of  an  insurance  broker. 
He  spent  so  much  time  making  sketches  that  his 
employer  decided  he  was  destined  for  art  and  not 
for  business,  and  secured  another  clerk. 

Young  Sully  thoroughly  agreed  with  this  and 
started  out  to  be  an  artist.  He  had  no  money,  nor 
means  of  earning  any,  but  he  managed  to  secure 
some  desultory  instruction,  and  this,  added  to  his 
native  talent,  enabled  him  to  begin  to  paint  portraits 
for  which  uncritical  persons  were  willing  to  pay.  But 
it  was  a  hard  road,  and  none  was  more  conscious 
of  his  deficiencies  than  himself.  He  knew  that  he 
needed  training,  and  finally  started  for  England  with 
a  purse  of  four  hundred  dollars  in  his  pocket,  which 
had  been  subscribed  by  friends,  who  were  each  to 
be  repaid  by  a  copy  of  an  old  master. 

Arrived  at  London,  Sully  at  once  got  himself  in 
troduced  to  Benjamin  West,  who  received  him  "  like 
a  father,"  admitted  him  to  his  studio,  and  aided  him 
in  many  ways.  He  remained  there,  painting  by  day, 
drawing  by  night,  studying  anatomy  in  every  spare 

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moment,  and  living  on  bread  and  potatoes  and  water 
in  order  to  make  his  money  last  as  long  as  possible. 
At  the  end  of  nine  months  it  was  gone,  and  he  was 
forced  to  return  to  America. 

But  those  nine  months  of  study  had  given  him 
just  what  he  needed,  and  his  talent  soon  gained  recog 
nition.  Orders  poured  in  upon  him  at  good  prices ; 
and  though  his  prosperity  afterwards  dwindled  some 
what,  he  never  again  experienced  the  pangs  of  pov 
erty.  He  made  Philadelphia  his  home,  and  for  nearly 
half  a  century  occupied  a  house  on  Chestnut  Street 
which  had  been  built  for  him  by  Stephen  Girard. 
His  work  is  in  every  way  worthy  of  respect — firm 
and  serious  and  rich  with  a  warm  and  mellow 
color. 

Benjamin  West  had  many  other  pupils — indeed, 
his  studio  was  a  sort  of  incubator  for  American  art 
ists — but  none  of  them  won  any  permanent  fame. 
One,  Washington  Allston,  achieved  considerable  con 
temporary  reputation,  but  it  seems  to  have  resulted 
more  from  his  own  winning  personality  than  from 
his  work.  He  possessed  a  charm  which  fairly  dazzled 
all  who  met  him,  notably  Coleridge  and  Washington 
Irving.  His  smaller  canvasses,  graceful  figures  or 
heads,  to  which  he  attached  little  importance,  are 
more  admired  to-day  than  his  more  ambitious  ones. 

Another  pupil  was  John  Yanderlyn,  of  Dutch 
stock,  as  his  name  shows,  a  protege  of  Aaron  Burr, 
and  the  painter  of  the  best  known  portrait  of  his 
daughter,  Theodosia,  as  well  as  of  Burr  himself. 
When  Burr,  an  outcast  in  fortune  and  men's  eyes? 

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iled  to  Paris,  Yanderlyn,  who  had  made  some  reputa 
tion  there,  was  able  to  repay,  to  some  extent,  the 
kindness  which  Burr  had  shown  him.  His  work 
shows  care  and  serious  thought,  but  his  last  years 
were  embittered  by  the  indifference  of  the  public, 
and  he  died  in  want. 

That  versatile  genius  and  hale  old  man,  Charles 
"Willson  Peale,  to  whom  we  have  already  referred, 
had  many  children,  and  he  christened  them  with  most 
distinguished  names,  so  that,  in  the  end,  he  could 
boast  himself  the  father  of  Raphael,  Rembrandt, 
Rubens  and  Titian.  Alas  that  the  name  does  not 
make  the  man!  Only  one  of  them,  Rembrandt, 
achieved  any  distinction  in  art,  and  that  but  a  faint 
and  far-off  reflection  of  the  master  whose  name  he 
bore. 

Like  his  father,  he  was  interested  in  many  things 
besides  his  art;  he  conducted  a  museum  at  Baltimore, 
introduced  illuminating  gas  there,  wrote  voluminous 
memoirs,  and,  living  until  1860,  became  a  sort  of 
dean  of  the  profession.  An  example  of  his  work  will 
be  found  in  "  Men  of  Action,"  the  likeness  of  Thomas 
Jefferson  given  there  being  a  reproduction  from  a 
portrait  painted  by  him.  His  portraits  are  not  held 
in  high  estimation  at  the  present  day,  for,  while 
correct  enough  in  drawing,  they  show  little  insight. 
"We  have  come  to  demand  something  more  than  me 
chanical  skill,  and  that  "  something  more,"  which 
makes  the  artist  and  divides  him  from  the  artisan, 
is  exactly  what  Rembrandt  Peale  did  not  possess. 

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It  is  interesting,  too,  to  note  that  one  of  the  most 
promising  painters  of  the  time  was  S.  F.  B.  Morse. 
In  the  Yale  School  of  Fine  Arts  hangs  a  portrait  of 
Mrs.  De  Forest,  and  in  the  New  York  City  Hall  one 
of  Lafayette,  both  of  them  from  his  brush,  and  both 
not  unworthy  the  best  traditions  of  American  art. 
But  a  chance  conversation  about  electricity  turned 
his  thoughts  in  that  direction,  and  he  abandoned 
painting  for  invention — the  result  being  the  electric 
telegraph.  We  shall  speak  of  him  further  in  the 
chapter  on  inventors. 

The  passing  of  Washington  Allston  and  his  group 
marked  the  end  of  Benjamin  West's  influence,  and, 
in  a  way,  of  English  influence,  on  American  paint 
ing.  It  marked,  too,  a  lapse  in  interest,  for  it  was  a 
long  time  before  it  found  for  itself  an  adequate  mode 
of  expression.  There  are,  however,  two  or  three  men 
of  the  period  whom  we  must  mention,  not  so  much 
because  of  their  achievements,  which  had  little  sig 
nificance,  as  because  of  their  remarkable  and  inspir 
ing  lives. 

Chester  Harding,  reared  on  the  New  York  frontier, 
a  typical  back-woodsman,  by  turns  a  peddler,  a 
tavern-keeper,  and  house-painter,  and  a  failure  at  all 
of  them,  got  so  deeply  in  debt  that  he  ran  away  to 
Pittsburg  to  escape  his  creditors,  and  there,  to  his 
amazement,  one  day  saw  an  itinerant  painter  paint 
ing  a  portrait.  Before  that,  he  had  secured  work 
of  some  sort,  and  his  wife  had  joined  him.  Filled 
with  admiration  for  the  artist's  work,  he  procured  a 

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board  and  some  paint,  and  sat  down  to  paint  a 
portrait  of  his  wife.  He  actually  did  produce  a  like 
ness,  and,  delighted  at  the  result,  practiced  a  while 
longer,  and  then,  proceeding  to  Paris,  Kentucky — 
perhaps  through  some  association  of  the  name  with 
the  great  art  centre  of  Europe — boldly  announced 
himself  as  a  portrait  painter,  and  got  about  a  hundred 
people  to  pay  him  twenty-five  dollars  apiece  to  paint 
them. 

He  spent  some  time  at  Cincinnati,  and  got  as  far 
west  as  St.  Louis,  where  he  journeyed  nearly  a  hun 
dred  miles  to  find  Daniel  Boone  living  in  his  log 
cabin  on  his  Missouri  land,  and  painted  the  portrait 
of  that  old  pioneer  which  is  reproduced  in  "  Men 
of  Action."  Boone  was  at  that  time  ninety  years  of 
age,  and  Harding  found  him  living  almost  alone, 
roasting  a  piece  of  venison  on  the  end  of  his  ramrod, 
as  had  been  his  custom  all  his  life. 

One  of  the  most  surprising  things  in  the  history 
of  American  art  is  the  facility  with  which  men  of 
all  trades  turned  to  portrait  painting,  apparently  as 
a  last  resort,  and  managed  to  make  a  living  at  it. 
During  the  first  half  of  the  last  century,  the  country 
seems  to  have  been  overrun  with  wandering  portrait 
painters,  whose  only  equipment  for  the  art  was  some 
paint  and  a  bundle  of  brushes.  They  had,  for  the 
most  part,  no  training,  and  that  anyone,  in  a  time 
when  money  was  scarce  and  hardly  earned,  should 
have  paid  it  out  for  the  wretched  daubs  these  men 
produced  is  a  great  mystery.  But  they  did  pay  it 
out,  and,  as  we  have  seen,  Harding  earned  no  less 

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than  twenty-five  hundred  dollars  in  a  comparatively 
short  time. 

"With  such  of  this  money  as  he  had  been  able  to 
save,  he  went  to  Philadelphia  and  spent  two  months 
in  study  there;  then  he  returned  to  his  old  home, 
and  astonished  his  neighbors  by  paying  his  debts. 
He  astonished  them  still  more  when  they  found  he 
was  making  money  by  painting  portraits,  for  which 
he  now  charged  forty  dollars  each,  and  his  aged 
grandfather  felt  obliged  to  protest. 

"  Chester,"  he  said,  having  called  him  aside  so 
that  none  could  overhear,  "  I  want  to  speak  to  you 
about  your  present  mode  of  life.  I  think  it  no 
better  than  swindling  to  charge  forty  dollars  for 
one  of  those  effigies.  Xow  I  want  you  to  give  up 
this  way  of  living  and  settle  down  on  a  farm  and 
become  a  respectable  man." 

However  excellent  this  advice  may  have  been, 
Chester  had  gone  too  far  to  heed  it.  He  had  decided 
to  go  to  England,  but  he  stayed  in  America  long 
enough  to  earn  money  to  buy  a  farm  for  his  parents 
and  to  settle  his  own  family  at  Northampton.  This 
duty  accomplished,  he  set  sail  for  London,  and  his 
success  there  was  immediate,  due  as  much  to  his  re 
markable  personality  as  to  his  work.  He  returned 
to  America  in  1826,  and  spent  the  rest  of  his  life 
here,  painting  most  of  the  political  leaders  of  the 
country.  It  has  been  said  of  his  portraits  that  his 
heads  are  as  solid  as  iron  and  his  coats  as  uncom 
promising  as  tin,  while  his  faces  shine  like  burnished 
platters. 

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Remarkable  as  Harding's  story  is,  it  is  no  more 
so  than  that  of  many  of  his  contemporaries.  Francis 
Alexander,  for  instance,  born  in  Connecticut  in  1800, 
a  farm  boy  and  afterwards  a  school  teacher,  never 
attempted  painting  until  he  was  over  twenty.  Then 
one  day,  having  caught  a  pickerel,  its  beauty  re 
minded  him  of  a  box  of  water-colors  a  boy  had  left 
him,  and  he  attempted  to  paint  the  fish,  with  such 
success  that  he  was  filled  with  amazement  and  de 
light.  He  practiced  a  while  longer,  decorating  the 
white-washed  walls  of  a  room  with  rude  landscapes 
filled  with  cattle,  horses,  sheep,  hogs  and  chickens. 
All  the  neighbors  came  to  see  his  work  and  marvelled 
.at  it,  though  none  of  them  cared  to  have  his  house 
similarly  decorated;  but  finally  one  of  them  offered 
Alexander  five  dollars  if  he  would  paint  a  full-length 
portrait  of  a  child. 

Other  orders  followed,  and  finally  with  sixty  dol 
lars  in  his  pocket,  he  started  for  New  York.  Some 
years  later,  he  sought  Gilbert  Stuart,  at  Boston,  got 
some  systematic  instruction  and  ended  by  painting 
very  passable  portraits. 

Some  amusing  stories  are  told  of  the  persistency 
with  which  he  hunted  for  orders.  In  1842,  Charles 
Dickens  visited  America  for  the  first  time,  and  while 
his  ship  was  yet  out  of  sight  of  land,  the  pilot 
clambered  on  board,  and  after  him  Alexander,  who 
begged  the  great  novelist  for  the  privilege  of  paint 
ing  his  portrait.  Dickens,  amused  at  his  enterprise, 
consented,  and  Alexander's  studio,  during  the  sit 
tings,  became  the  centre  of  literary  Boston.  It  is 

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a  curious  commentary  upon  Alexander's  development 
that,  after  a  trip  or  two  abroad,  lie  professed  to  find 
the  crudities  of  his  native  land  unbearable,  and  spent 
his  last  years  in  Italy. 

A  third  self-made  artist  was  John  Neagle,  whose 
portrait  of  Gilbert  Stuart,  which  heads  this  chapter, 
is  the  best  that  exists.  Neagle  was  apprenticed, 
when  a  boy,  to  a  coach-painter,  and  soon  was  spend 
ing  his  spare  time  practicing  a  more  ambitious 
branch  of  the  painting  profession.  As  soon  as  he  was 
through  his  apprenticeship  he  set  up  as  a  portrait 
painter,  and  travelled  over  the  mountains  to  Lexing 
ton,  Kentucky,  hoping  to  fare  as  well  as  Harding 
had.  But  he  found  the  field  already  pre-empted  by 
two  other  painters,  one  of  whom,  Matthew  Jouett, 
was  an  artist  of  considerable  skill. 

!N"eagle  had  a  hard  time  getting  back  home  again, 
but  he  finally  reached  Philadelphia,  and  spent  most 
of  the  remainder  of  his  life  there.  Practice  and 
study  gave  him  a  certain  skill;  he  visited  Boston  and 
had  the  advantage  of  some  instruction  from  Gilbert 
Stuart,  but  his  work  remained  to  the  end  inferior 
to  either  Hoarding's  or  Alexander's. 

Henry  Inman  had  a  more  varied  talent  than  any 
of  these  men,  for  besides  portraits  he  painted  genre 
scenes  and  landscapes,  and  excelled  in  all  of  them. 
At  the  age  of  fourteen,  he  had  been  apprenticed  to 
a  painter  by  the  name  of  John  Wesley  Jarvis,  a 
picturesque  character,  better  remembered  by  his 
anecdotes  than  by  his  work;  and  when  his  appren 
ticeship  was  over  he  began  painting  on  his  own 

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account  in  New  York  and  afterwards  in  Philadel 
phia.  For  a  time  his  popularity  was  very  great 
and  his  income  large;  hut  reverses  came,  ill  health 
followed,  and  he  died  in  poverty  at  the  age  of 
forty-five. 

It  is  worth  noting  that,  up  to  this  time,  practi 
cally  no  landscapes  had  been  produced  by  American 
artists.  A  few  of  them  had  tried  their  hands  at 
landscape  work,  but  soon  abandoned  it  for  the  more 
profitable  field  of  portraiture.  The  first  of  the 
American  school  of  landscapists  may  be  fairly  said 
to  be  Asher  Brown  Duraiid.  Durand  was  the  eighth 
of  eleven  children,  and  his  father,  who  managed  a 
small  farm  on  the  slope  of  Orange  Mountain,  in  New 
Jersey,  was  renowned  throughout  the  neighborhood 
for  his  mechanical  ingenuity.  Much  of  this  inge 
nuity  his  son  inherited,  and  his  first  artistic  effort 
was  an  attempt  to  reproduce  the  woodcuts  in  his 
school  books  by  engraving  them  on  little  plates 
which  he  had  beaten  out  of  copper  cents.  This  led 
to  his  being  apprenticed  to  an  engraver,  and  after  his 
apprenticeship  was  over,  he  devoted  three  years  to 
engraving  the  plate  of  Trumbull's  "  Signing  of 
the  Declaration  of  Independence."  The  work 
was  excellently  done  and  established  Durand's  repu 
tation. 

But  he  was  not  satisfied  with  engraving,  and  soon 
abandoned  it  for  the  more  creative  work  of  paint 
ing.  He  tried  his  hand  first  at  portraiture,  in  which 
he  had  considerable  success ;  but  he  turned  more  and 
more  to  landscape  work  as  the  years  went  on.  He 

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practiced  it  continuously  until  his  eighty-third  year. 
Then  he  laid  down  his  brush  forever,  saying,  "  My 
hand  will  no  longer  do  my  bidding,"  and  the  remain 
ing  seven  years  of  his  life  were  passed  peacefully  on 
the  farm  where  he  was  born. 

Durand's  work  is  marked  throughout  by  sincerity 
and  skill,  if  not  by  genius.  His  portraits  were  in  a 
style  especially  his  own,  thorough  in  workmanship, 
delicately  modelled  and  strongly  painted.  His  land 
scapes,  too,  are  his  own,  clearly  and  definitely  fin 
ished,  and  with  a  bewitching  silvery  gray  tone,  which 
could  have  come  only  by  painting  direct  from  his 
subject  in  the  open  air,  a  practice  exceptional  at  the 
time.  His  pictures  are  not  "  compositions,"  in  the 
artistic  sense  of  the  term — that  is,  he  did  not  com 
bine  detail  into  a  balanced  whole;  they  are  rather 
studies  or  sketches  from  nature,  with  a  central  point 
of  interest.  But  the  work  is  done  so  truly  and  with 
such  patience  and  enthusiasm  that  it  deserves  the 
sincerest  admiration. 

Joined  with  Durand  as  the  earliest  of  the  land- 
scapists  in  Thomas  Cole.  Cole  was  born  in  England 
and  did  not  come  to  America  until  he  had  reached 
his  nineteenth  year,  but  he  afterwards  became  so 
good  an  American  that  he  declared  he  would  give 
his  left  hand  to  have  been  identified  with  America 
by  birth  instead  of  adoption.  He  found  employ 
ment  in  Philadelphia  as  an  engraver.  Then,  after 
some  practice,  he  got  together  a  kit  of  painting  mate 
rials,  and  started  to  tramp  about  the  country  as  a 
portraitist.  He  found  the  woods  full  of  them,  and 

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competition  so  fierce  that  he  was  unable  to  make 
a  living;  but,  determining  to  be  an  artist  at  any  cost, 
he  returned  to  Philadelphia  and  passed  a  fearful  win 
ter  there,  living  on  bread  and  water,  half  frozen  by 
the  cold,  with  only  a  cloth  table-cover  for  overcoat 
and  bed,  and  suffering  tortures  from  inflammatory 
rheumatism.  A  second  trying  winter  followed,  but 
in  the  spring  of  1825  he  removed  to  New  York, 
and  his  privations  were  at  an  end. 

For  in  those  years  of  suffering  he  had  developed 
a  delicate  art  as  a  landscapist,  and  he  found  a  ready 
sale  for  his  pictures,  at  first  at  low  prices,  it  is  true; 
but  his  fame  spread  rapidly,  and  he  was  able,  in 
1829,  to  go  abroad  and  spend  three  years  in  Italy 
and  England.  He  lived  only  to  the  age  of  forty- 
seven,  his  last  years  being  passed  principally  in  his 
studio  in  the  Catskills,  where  some  of  his  most  fa 
mous  pictures  were  painted. 

Cole  was  widely  known  for  many  years  for  the 
various  series  of  moral  and  didactic  pictures  which 
he  was  fond  of  painting.  Perhaps  the  most  famous 
of  these  was  his  "  Voyage  of  Life,"  showing  infancy, 
youth,  manhood,  and  old  age  floating  down  the 
stream  of  time.  The  taste  of  the  period  approved 
them,  and  they  were  especially  popular  for  school 
rooms,  lecture-halls  and  other  places  where  youth 
would  have  a  chance  to  gaze  upon  and  gather  edi 
fication  from  them.  It  has  since  come  to  be  recog 
nized  that  the  proper  way  to  tell  a  story  is  by  words 
and  not  by  pictures,  and  "  The  Voyage  of  Life,"  and 
"  Course  of  Empire,"  and  "The  Cross  and  the 

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World  "  have,  for  the  most  part,  been  relegated  to  the 
attic. 

Durand  and  Cole  were  the  founders  of  the  famous 
Hudson  River,  or  White  Mountain  school,  which 
loomed  so  large  in  American  art  half  a  century  ago. 
Its  members,  now  rather  regarded  in  the  light  of 
primitives,  gloried  in  the  views  of  the  Hudson,  espe 
cially  as  seen  from  the  Catskills,  and  journeyed  into 
the  wilds  of  the  Rockies  and  the  Yellowstone  in 
search  of  sublime  subjects — too  sublime  to  be  trans 
ferred  to  canvas.  They  loved  nature — loved  to  copy 
her  minutely  and  literally,  loved  to  live  in  her  hills 
and  woods.  Some  of  them  came  afterwards  to  see 
that,  after  all,  this  was  not  art,  or  only  one  of  her 
lower  forms — that  to  achieve  a  great  result,  a  pic 
ture  must  express  an  idea. 

Cole  had  a  pupil  and  disciple,  who  did  some  admir 
able  work,  in  Frederick  Edwin  Church.  Church  was 
born  in  1826,  and  lived  with  Cole  in  his  house  in 
the  Catskills  until  the  latter's  death.  He  then  estab 
lished  himself  in  New  York,  and  proceeded  to  visit 
the  four  corners  of  the  earth  in  search  for  grandiose 
scenes.  For  he  made  the  mistake  of  thinking  that 
the  greatness  of  a  landscape  lay  in  its  subject  rather 
than  in  its  execution;  so  he  painted  views  of  the 
Andes,  and  Magara,  and  Cotopaxi,  and  Chimborazo, 
and  the  Parthenon,  throwing  in  rainbows  and  sunsets 
and  mists  for  good  measure.  These  pictures  were  wel 
comed  with  the  wildest  enthusiasm — just  as  Clarke 
Mills's  statue  of  General  Jackson  had  been,  fifteen 
years  before.  Strange  to  say,  they  were  not  absurd, 

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as  that  amazing  figure  is,  but  were  really  fine  exam 
ples  of  clever  handling  and  of  a  true,  if  untrained, 
feeling. 

Two  men  attempted  to  duplicate  Church's  suc 
cess,  but  with  very  indifferent  result.  They  were 
Albert  Bierstadt  and  Thomas  Moran.  The  former 
sought  the  Rocky  Mountains  for  his  subjects;  the 
latter,  the  Yosemite  and  the  Yellowstone;  but  nei 
ther  of  them  succeeded  in  transferring  to  canvas 
more  than  a  pale  and  unconvincing  presentment  of 
the  wonders  of  those  regions. 

Durand  also  had  a  disciple,  more  famous  than 
Cole's,  in  Frederick  Kensett,  the  best  known  of  the 
so-called  Hudson  River  school.  He  was  a  close  fol 
lower  of  Durand  in  believing  that  nature  should  be 
literally  rendered,  but  he  missed  the  truth  of  the 
older  man  by  working  in  his  studio  from  drawings 
and  sketches,  instead  of  in  the  open  air  direct  from 
his  subject.  So  he  got  into  the  habit  of  painting  all 
shadows  a  transparent  brown,  and  of  making  his 
rocks  and  trees  brilliant  by  touching  in  high-lights 
where  he  thought  they  ought  to  be  instead  of  where 
they  actually  should  have  been.  He  surpassed  Du 
rand,  however,  in  his  range  of  subject,  for  all  hours 
and  seasons  had  their  charm  for  him,  while  Durand 
was  really  at  home  only  in  the  full  light  of  a  summer 
day. 

On  this  foundation  a  loftier  structure  was  soon 
built  and  the  builders  were  George  Inness,  Alex 
ander  Wyant  and  Homer  D.  Martin.  Inness  was  the 
oldest  of  the  three,  having  been  born  in  1825,  and 

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was  contemporary  with  some  of  the  most  arbitrary 
and  hide-bound  of  the  nature  copyists.  But  he  felt 
the  weakness  of  the  method  and  himself  attained  a 
much  fuller  and  completer  art.  He  seems  to  have 
dabbled  with  paint  and  brushes  from  his  youth,  but 
had  little  regular  instruction,  studying,  for  the  most 
part,  from  prints  of  old  pictures,  and  finally,  in 
1847,  getting  a  chance  to  see  the  original  when  a 
friend  offered  to  send  him  to  Europe.  He  passed 
fifteen  months  in  Eome,  and  afterwards  a  year  at 
Paris. 

A  long  period  of  assimilation  followed,  in  which 
he  developed  a  theory  of  art  and  struggled  to  trans 
fer  it  to  canvas.  It  was  a  sound  and  true  theory, 
and  is  worth  setting  down  here  for  its  own  sake. 
"  The  purpose  of  the  painter,"  Inness  held,  "  is  to 
reproduce  in  other  minds  the  impression  which  a 
scene  had  made  upon  him.  A  work  of  art  does  not 
appeal  to  the  intellect  or  to  the  moral  sense.  Its  aim 
is  not  to  instruct,  not  to  edify,  but  to  awaken  an 
emotion.  It  must  be  a  single  emotion,  if  the  work 
has  unity,  as  every  such  work  should  have,  and  the 
true  beauty  of  the  work  consists  in  the  beauty  of  the 
sentiment  or  emotion  which  it  inspires.  Its  real 
greatness  consists  in  the  quality  and  force  of  this 
emotion." 

To  the  very  last,  Inness's  work  was  changing  and 
developing  to  fit  this  theory.  He  steadily  gained 
mastery  of  tone  and  breadth  of  handling,  of  true 
harmony,  and  it  is  his  crowning  merit  that  he  does 
to  some  extent  succeed  in  "  reproducing  in  other 

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minds  the  impression  which  the  scene  made  upon 
him." 

Alexander  H.  Wyant  was  a  pupil  of  Inness,  jour 
neying  from  the  little  Ohio  town  where  he  was  born 
to  see  him  and  to  ask  for  advice  and  aid,  which, 
Inness  freely  gave.  Wyant's  boyhood  had  been  the 
American  artist's  usual  one — an  early  fondness  for 
drawing,  a  little  practice,  and  then  setting  up  as  a 
painter.  In  1873  he  joined  an  expedition  to  Ari 
zona  and  New  Mexico.  The  hardships  which  lie 
endured  resulted  in  a  stroke  of  paralysis  and  he  was 
never  again  able  to  use  his  right  hand.  With  an 
inspiring  patience,  he  set  to  work  to  learn  to  use  his 
left  hand,  and  grew  to  be  more  skillful  with  it  than 
he  had  been  with  his  right. 

But  even  at  his  best,  Wyant's  appeal  is  more  lim 
ited  than  Inness's.  He  learned  to  paint  a  typical 
picture,  a  glimpse  of  rolling  country  seen  between 
the  trunks  of  tall  and  slender  birches  or  maples,  and 
was  content  to  paint  variations  of  it  over  and  over. 
That  he  sometimes  did  it  superbly  cannot  be  denied, 
and  he  possessed  a  certain  delicate  refinement,  an. 
ability  to  throw  upon  his  pictures  the  silvery  shim 
mer  of  summer  sunshine,  in  which  no  other  Ameri 
can  artist  has  ever  surpassed  him. 

The  third,  and  in  some  respects  the  most  interest 
ing  member  of  the  group  is  Homer  D.  Martin.  Born 
in  Albany  in  1838,  he  turned  naturally  to  painting 
and  began  to  produce  pictures  after  only  two  weeks' 
instruction.  At  first,  he  was  a  disciple  of  Kensett, 
with  brown  shadows  and  artificial  high-lights,  but 

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study  of  nature  soon  cured  these  mannerisms,  and  lie 
grew  steadily  in  skill  and  power,  until  he  succeeded 
in  imparting  to  his  pictures  the  deep,  grave  and  so 
bering  sentiment,  which  is  the  keynote  of  his  work. 
His  coast  views,  with  their  swirl  and  almost  audible 
thunder  of  billow,  are  considered  his  crowning 
achievements. 

This  culmination  of  the  Hudson  River  school 
brings  us  fairly  to  our  own  times  and  to  the  work  of 
men  still  living,  for  the  period  just  preceding  and 
following  the  Civil  War  was  marked  by  no  new  im 
pulse  in  American  art  and  by  no  work  which  de^- 
mands  attention.  But  in  the  early  seventies,  there 
were  a  number  of  Americans  studying  at  home  or  in 
Europe  who  have  since  won  a  wide  reputation  for 
inspiring  achievement. 

Foremost  among  these  is  Elihu  Vedder,  born  in 
!N"ew  York  City  in  183G,  and  following,  in  his  man 
hood,  the  manifest  bent  of  his  childish  years.  He 
went  to  Paris  before  he  was  of  age,  and  from  there 
to  Rome,  where  he  spent  five  years.  The  five  suc 
ceeding  years  were  spent  in  America,  and  finally, 
in  1866,  he  settled  in  Rome  and  has  since  made  it 
his  home.  He  represents  a  revival  of  the  classical 
quality  of  Raphael  or  Michael  Angelo,  though  he  be 
longs  to  no  school,  and  his  work  has  from  the  very 
first  possessed  a  distinct  originality.  He  has  held  to 
the  old  simplicity,  which  minimized  detail  and  ex 
alted  the  subject.  General  recognition  came  to  him  in 
1884,  when  he  published  his  illustrations  to  the 
Rubaiyat  of  Omar  Khayyam — the  most  sympathetic 

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and  beautiful  pictorial  comment  which  has  ever  beea 
given  any  book  of  poetry.  Since  then  he  has  exe 
cuted  much  decorative  work  of  a  high  order,  though 
the  mastery  in  this  branch  of  the  art  is  held  by  an 
other. 

That  other  is  John  LaFarge,  admittedly  the  great 
est  mural  painter  the  world  has  seen  in  recent  years. 
His  life  was  a  fortunate  one.  His  father,  an  officer 
of  the  French  marine,  came  to  this  country  in  1806, 
married,  and  purchased  a  great  plantation  in  Louisi 
ana,  from  which  he  derived  a  large  revenue.  His 
son,  born  in  1835,  grew  up  in  an  artistic  atmosphere 
of  books  and  pictures,  and  was  early  taught  to  draw. 
When,  after  some  study  of  law,  he  visited  Paris,  his 
father  advised  him  to  take  up  the  study  of  art  as  an 
accomplishment,  and  he  entered  one  of  the  studios, 
merely  as  an  amateur,  at  the  same  time  gaining  ad 
mittance,  through  his  family  connections,  to  the 
inner  artistic  circles  of  the  capital.  For  some  years 
he  studied  art,  not  to  become  a  painter,  but  because 
he  wished  to  understand  and  appreciate  great  work, 
and  at  the  end  of  that  time,  he  returned  to  New  York 
and  entered  a  lawyer's  office. 

But  he  was  ill  at  ease  there,  and  finally  definitely 
decided  upon  an  artistic  career,  went  to  Newport  and 
worked  under  the  guidance  of  William  Morris  Hunt, 
painting  everything,  but  turning  in  the  end  to 
decorative  work,  and  afterwards  to  stained  glass.  In 
these  he  has  had  no  equal,  and  his  high  achievement, 
as  well  as  the  wide  appreciation  his  work  has  won,  is 
peculiarly  grateful  to  Americans,  since  LaFarge's 

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career  has  been  characteristically  American.  He  had 
little  actual  study  in  Europe,  and  yet  possesses  cer 
tain  great  traditions  of  the  masters  to  a  degree  un 
equalled  by  any  compatriot. 

Of  his  work  as  a  whole,  it  is  difficult  to  speak 
adequately.  Perhaps  its  most  striking  characteristic 
is  the  thought  that  is  lavished  upon  it,  so  that  the 
artist  gives  us  the  very  spirit  of  his  subjects.  In 
inspiration,  in  handling,  in  drawing,  and  in  color, 
LaFarge  stands  alone.  No  man  of  his  generation 
has  equalled  him  in  the  power  to  lift  the  spectator  out 
of  himself  and  into  an  enchanted  world  by  the  con 
summate  harmony  of  strong,  pure  color.  This  feel 
ing  for  color  culminated  in  his  stained-glass  work — 
probably  the  richest  color  creations  that  have  ever 
been  fashioned  on  this  earth.  In  all  his  varied  mass 
of  production  there  is  nothing  that  lacks  interest  and 
charm. 

We  have  referred  to  LaFarge's  study  under 
William  Morris  Hunt,  and  we  must  pause  for  a  mo 
ment  to  speak  of  the  older  artist.  His  artistic  career 
was  in  some  respects  an  accident,  for,  developing  a 
tendency  to  consumption  in  his  late  boyhood,  his 
mother  took  him  to  Rome  and  remained  there  long 
enough  to  enable  him  to  imbibe  some  of  the  artistic 
traditions  of  the  Eternal  City  and  to  begin  work  with 
H.  K.  Brown,  the  sculptor.  He  found  the  work  so 
congenial  that  he  persuaded  his  mother  to  omit  the 
course  at  Harvard  which  had  been  expected  of  him, 
and  to  permit  him  to  devote  his  life  to  art. 

For  five  or  six  years  thereafter,  he  studied  at 
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Rome  and  Paris,  then  for  three  years  he  was  with 
Millet  at  Barbizon.  Finally,  in  1855,  he  returned  to 
America,  settling  first  at  Newport  and  afterwards 
at  Boston.  He  painted  many  portraits  and  figure 
pieces,  and  was  an  active  social  and  artistic  influence 
to  the  day  of  his  death.  As  an  artist,  he  lacked  train 
ing,  and  remained  to  the  end  an  amateur  of  great 
promise,  which  was  never  quite  fulfilled. 

And  this  brings  us  to  the  most  eccentric,  the  most 
striking,  and  in  some  respects  the  greatest  artist  of 
Ms  time — James  Abbott  McNeill  Whistler.  Whis 
tler  was  born  at  Lowell,  Massachusetts,  in  1834.  His 
grandfather,  of  an  English  family  long  settled  in 
Ireland,  had.  been  a  member  of  Burgoyne's  invading 
army,  but  afterwards  joined  the  American  service, 
and,  after  the  close  of  the  Revolution,  settled  at 
Lowell.  His  father  was  a  distinguished  engineer,  and 
major  in  the  army,  and  after  his  death  in  1849,  it 
was  natural  that  young  Whistler  should  turn  to  the 
army  as  a  career.  He  entered  West  Point  in  1851, 
remained  there  three  years,  and  was  finally  dropped 
for  deficiency  in  chemistry. 

There  was  one  study,  however,  in  which  he  had 
distinguished  himself,  and  that  was  drawing;  and 
after  his  dismissal  he  went  to  Paris,  where  he  studied 
for  two  or  three  years.  Then  he  removed  to  London, 
where  most  of  the  remainder  of  his  life  was  spent. 
His  work,  striking  and  original,  was  at  first  utterly 
misunderstood  by  the  public.  The  most  famous  piece 
of  hostile  criticism  to  which  he  was  subjected  was 
Ruskin's  remark,  after  looking  at  "  The  Falling 

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Painters 

Rocket "  in  1877,  that  here  was  a  fellow  with  the 
effrontery  to  charge  a  hundred  guineas  for  flinging- 
a  pot  of  paint  in  the  public's  face.  Some  further 
years  of  abuse  followed,  and  then  the  pendulum 
swung  the  other  way,  and  the  eccentric  artist  became 
a  sort  of  cult.  In  the  end,  he  won  a  wide  reputation, 
and  before  his  death  was  recognized  as  one  of  the 
leading  painters  of  his  time. 

And  this  reputation  was  deserved,  for  his  work 
possesses  a  rare  and  delicate  beauty,  individual  to  it. 
His  portraits  of  his  mother  and  of  Thomas  Carlyle 
are  admirable  in  their  simplicity  and  quiet  dignity; 
and  many  of  his  "  harmonies,"  as  he  liked  to  call 
them,  are  so  complete  and  flawless  that  they  are  works 
of  pure  delight.  Whistler  always  declared  that  he 
had  no  desire  to  reproduce  external  nature,  but  only 
beautiful  combinations  of  pattern  and  tone;  what  he 
meant,  probably,  was  that  he  sought,  not  external 
realities,  but  the  spirit  which  underlies  them.  That,, 
of  course,  has  been  the  quest  of  every  great  painter. 

If  Whistler  was  a  law  unto  himself,  so,  in  another 
sense,  is  Winslow  Homer,  who  has  worked  out  for 
himself  an  individual  point  of  view  and  method  of 
expression.  Born  in  Boston  in  1836,  and  early  de 
veloping  a  taste  for  drawing,  he  entered  a  lithog* 
rapher's  shop  at  the  age  of  nineteen  and  two  years 
later  set  up  for  himself.  During  the  Civil  War  he 
acted  as  correspondent  and  artist  for  Harper's 
Weekly,  and,  when  peace  came,  began  his  paintings 
with  a  series  of  army  scenes.  After  that  he  tried  his 
hand  at  landscape,  and  finally  found  his  real  vocation; 

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as  a  painter  of  the  sea.  From  the  first,  his  pictures 
possessed  obvious  sincerity.  More  than  that,  they 
convince  by  their  absolute  veracity,  as  a  reproduction 
of  the  thing  seen — seen,  be  it  understood,  by  the  eyes 
of  the  artist — and  so  they  have  lived  and  been  re 
membered  where  more  ambitious  work  would  have 
been  forgotten.  Again,  he  chooses  his  subjects  with 
a  fine  disregard  of  what  other  men  have  done  or 
decided  that  it  was  impossible  to  do,  and  painted 
them  in  a  manner  wholly  independent  and  original. 
Ko  other  artist  has  so  conveyed  on  canvas  the  weight 
and  buoyancy  and  enormous  force  of  water;  no  one 
else  approaches  his  as  an  interpreter  of  the  power  of 
the  sea. 

Lineal  successor  of  Inness  is  Dwight  William 
Tryon,  not  that  his  work  resembles  the  older  man's, 
but  because  both  paint  the  American  landscape  with 
a  deep  personal  feeling  and  with  a  superb  technique. 
Tryon  has  not  yet  developed  into  so  commanding  a 
figure  as  Inness,  but  there  is  no  telling  what  the 
future  holds  for  him,  for  his  work  seems  as  full  of 
poetry  and  emotion  as  the  older  man's,  with  a  spirit 
more  delicate  and  a  foundation  more  firm. 

The  work  of  Francis  D.  Millet  has  attracted  wide 
attention  and  is  also  full  of  promise  and  inspiration. 
Millet  has  the  American  versatility — he  has  been  a 
war-correspondent,  an  illustrator,  has  written  travels, 
criticism,  and  even  fiction,  has  acted  as  an  expert  on 
old  pictures,  raised  carnations,  and  even,  in  time  of 
need,  performed  surgical  operations  on  wounded 
soldiers — all  of  it,  not  as  an  amateur,  but  as  a  pro- 

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fessional  asking  no  odds  of  anyone.  In  addition  to 
which,  he  has  been  a  painter,  and  a  painter  whose 
work  has  shown  no  sign  of  haste  or  distraction.  The 
quiet,  human  side  of  English  life  in  the  seventeenth 
and  eighteenth  centuries  is  what  has  most  appealed 
to  him,  the  country  parlors  and  white-washed 
kitchens,  peopled  with  travellers  and  buxom  serv 
ing-maids,  and  these  groups  are  unusually  attractive 
and  well  executed. 

Allied  with  Millet  in  taste  and  viewpoint,  and  with 
a  much  wider  popularity,  is  Edwin  A.  Abbey.  Be 
ginning  his  career  as  an  illustrator,  he  soon  reached 
the  front  rank  in  that  profession,  especially  with  his 
illustrations  of  classic  English  poems,  into  whose 
spirit  he  has  entered  so  completely  that  he  might 
better  be  called  their  interpreter  than  their  illus 
trator.  From  pen-and-ink  work,  he  progressed  natur 
ally  to  oil,  and  here,  too,  he  has  achieved  some 
notable  triumphs — so  notable,  indeed,  that,  though 
American,  he  was  chosen  by  the  English  government 
to  paint  the  official  picture  of  the  coronation  of  King 
Edward  VII.  It  is  a  curious  coincidence  that  the 
official  picture  of  the  coronation  of  Queen  Victoria 
was  also  painted  by  an  American,  C.  R.  Leslie. 

More  important  than  Abbey,  and  perhaps  the 
greatest  American  artist  alive  to-day  is  John  Singer 
Sargent,  whose  nationality  has  occasioned  no  little 
controversy.  Born  in  Florence  of  American  parents, 
receiving  his  artistic  training  in  Paris,  residing  since 
in  England,  though  with  much  travelling  through 
Europe  and  only  two  or  three  trips  to  the  land  of  his 

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allegiance,  he  may  still  be  held  an  American,  if  de 
scent  counts  for  anything.  His  paintings  have  been 
shown  wherever  pictures  are  to  be  seen  and  he  has 
received  for  them  all  honors  that  a  painter  can  re 
ceive. 

Before  the  freedom  and  certainty  of  Sargent's  art 
criticism  stands  abashed.  His  portraits  have  a  won 
derful  effect  of  vitality,  and  a  purity  and  brilliancy 
of  color  which  have  never  been  surpassed;  but  most 
noteworthy  of  all,  he  achieves  the  supreme  triumph 
of  the  portrait  painter  by  comprehending  and  dis 
playing  character.  He  shows  the  very  soul  of  his 
sitter,  without  malice  but  also  without  mercy.  Only 
towards  children  does  he  show  tenderness,  and  then 
lie  paints  with  a  wonderful  and  varied  charm.  Not 
only  of  people  but  of  places  does  he  give  the  charac 
ter — a  room  takes  on  personality;  silks,  velvets, 
furniture,  bric-a-brac  are  all  eloquent.  On  the 
~whole,  his  qualities  are  such  that  he  may  rightly  be 
considered  the  greatest  portrait  painter  since  Rey 
nolds  and  Gainsborough.  The  portrait  of  Edwin 
Booth,  at  the  beginning  of  the  chapter  dealing  with 
the  stage,  is  an  excellent  specimen  of  his  work. 

Sargent's  portraits  have  placed  him  among  the 
masters  of  all  time,  but  perhaps  he  is  most  widely 
known  by  his  remarkable  decorations  in  the  Boston 
Public  Library,  which  in  the  original  and  in  photo 
graphic  reproductions,  have  given  the  keenest  delight 
to  thousands  and  thousands  of  persons.  It  is  im 
possible  to  give  any  detailed  description  here  of  these 
masterpieces  of  decorative  art,  so  perfect  technically 

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Painters 

that  they  might  almost  serve  as  a  canon  to  decorative 
painters. 

American  painting  may  be  said  to  have  reached 
its  culmination  in  Sargent,  yet  there  are  two  other 
painters,  who,  if  they  fall  below  him  in  sheer  genius,, 
possess  a  charm  and  originality  all  their  own.  One 
of  these  is  George  de  Forest  Brush,  who,  somewhat 
after  the  fashion  of  Holbein,  looks  for  a  beauty  of 
spirit  independent  of  form  or  feature.  He  paints 
mothers  and  children  not  as  young  goddesses  rollick 
ing  with  cherubs,  but  as  grave  and  tender  women, 
who  have  sacrificed  without  regret  something  of  their 
health  and  youthful  freshness  to  the  children  they 
hold  in  their  arms.  In  such  groups  there  is  a  note 
of  penetrating  peace,  a  delicate  distinction,  which 
give  Brush  a  position  by  himself. 

The  other  is  John  W.  Alexander,  whose  work  is 
interesting  as  introducing  a  certain  new  element  into 
art — a  concentration  of  energy  on  the  originality  of 
the  first  general  effect,  including  nothing  that  does 
not  interest,  and  yet  giving  the  effect  of  completeness. 
In  Alexander's  portraits  there  is  nothing  to  distract 
the  interest  from  the  personality  of  the  sitter,  and  he 
usually  achieves  a  delineation  of  character  direct  and 
truthful. 

Here  this  short  review  of  the  great  personalities 
of  American  art  must  end.  There  are  many  other 
painters  alive  to-day  whose  work  is  full  of  promise, 
and  who  may  yet  achieve  great  places  in  the  world's 
Pantheon.  Indeed,  it  would  almost  seem  that  a 
renascence  of  American  art  is  at  hand.  The  country 

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has  emerged  from  the  crudities  of  its  first  years,  and 
from  the  mediocre  conventionality  of  its  middle 
period,  without  having  lost  the  freshness  and  enthu 
siasm  conducive  to  high  achievement.  Its  face  is 
toward  the  sunrise. 

SUMMARY 

COPLEY,  JOHN  SINGLETON.  Born  at  Boston,  July  3, 
1737;  went  to  Europe,  1771,  and  spent  the  remainder 
of  his  life  there,  principally  in  London;  associate  of 
Eoyal  Academy,  1771;  full  member,  1773;  died  at  Lon 
don,  September  9,  1815. 

WEST,  BENJAMIN.  Born  at  Springfield,  Chester 
County,  Pennsylvania,  October  10,  1738;  studied  in 
Italy,  1760-63;  settled  in  London,  1763;  became  court 
historical  painter,  1772;  president  of  the  Eoyal  Acad 
emy  for  many  years;  died  at  London,  March  11,  1820. 

PEALE,  CHARLES  WILLSON.  Born  at  Chestertown, 
Maryland,  April  16,  1741;  with  Copley  at  Boston, 
1768-69;  went  to  London,  1770;  and  studied  under 
Benjamin  West;  returned  to  America,  1774;  served 
in  Eevolution,  1776-77;  opened  "  Peale's  Museum," 
1802;  died  at  Philadelphia,  February  22,  1827. 

STUART,  GILBERT.  Born  at  Narragansett,  Ehode 
Island,  December  3,  1755;  went  to  London  and  became 
pupil  of  West,  1775;  returned  to  United  States,  1792; 
died  at  Boston,  July  27,  1828. 

TRUMBULL,  JOHN.  Born  at  Lebanon,  Connecticut, 
June  6,  1756;  served  in  Eevolution,  attaining  rank  of 
colonel;  studied  under  West  in  London,  and  returned 
to  America,  1804;  died  at  New  York  City,  November 
10,  1843. 

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Painters 

SULLY,  THOMAS.  Born  at  Horncastle,  Lincolnshire, 
England,  June  8,  1783 ;  brought  to  America  at  the  age 
of  nine;  went  to  London,  1809,  and  studied  under 
West;  settled  in  Philadelphia  in  1810,  and  spent  the 
remainder  of  his  life  there,  dying  November  5,  1872. 

ALLSTON,  WASHINGTON.  Born  at  Naccamaw,  South 
Carolina,  November  5,  1779;  graduated  at  Harvard, 
1800;  studied  at  Royal  Academy  and  at  Borne,  return 
ing  to  America,  1809;  died  at  Cambridge,  Massachu 
setts,  July  9,  1843. 

VANDERLYN,  JOHN.  Born  at  Kingston,  New  York, 
October  15,  1775;  studied  art  abroad,  1796-1801;  and 
spent  subsequent  years  in  Europe,  returning  to  Amer 
ica  in  1815;  died  at  Kingston,  September  24,  1852. 

PEALE,  REMBRANDT.  Born  in  Bucks  County,  Penn 
sylvania,  February  22,  1778;  went  to  London  and 
studied  under  West,  1801-03;  died  at  Philadelphia, 
October  3,  1860. 

HARDING,  CHESTER.  Born  at  Conway,  Massachu 
setts,  September  1,  1792;  studied  in  London,  1823-26; 
died  at  Boston,  April  1,  1866. 

ALEXANDER,  FRANCIS.  Born  in  Connecticut,  1800; 
went  to  Europe  in  1831,  finally  taking  up  his  residence 
in  Florence,  where  he  died. 

NEAGLE,  JOHN.  Born  at  Boston,  November  4,  1796; 
died  at  Philadelphia,  September  17,  1865. 

INMAN,  HENRY.  Born  at  Utica,  New  York,  October 
20,  1801 ;  served  seven  years'  apprenticeship  with  John 
Wesley  Jarvis;  died  at  New  York  City,  January  17, 
1846. 

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DURAND,  ASHER  BROWN.  Born  at  Jefferson,  New 
Jersey,  August  21,  1796 ;  apprenticed  to  Peter  Maver 
ick,  an  engraver,  1812;  president  of  National  Academy 
of  Design,  1845-61 ;  died  at  South  Orange,  New  Jersey, 
September  17,  1886. 

COLE,  THOMAS.  Born  at  Bolton-le-Moors,  Lan 
cashire,  England,  February  1,  1801;  came  to  America, 
1819;  settled  in  New  York,  1825;  died  at  Catskill, 
New  York,  February  11,  1848. 

CHURCH,  FREDERIC  EDWIN.  Born  at  Hartford,  Con 
necticut,  May  4,  1826;  pupil  of  Thomas  Cole;  National 
Academician,  1849;  died  at  New  York  City,  April  7, 
1900. 

BIERSTADT,  ALBERT.  Born  at  Diisseldorf,  Germany, 
January  7,  1830;  brought  to  America,  1831;  early  de 
veloped  a  taste  for  art,  and  studied  at  Diisseldorf,  1853- 
57;  returned  to  America  and  remained  here,  except 
for  brief  visits  to  Europe ;  died  at  N"ew  York  City,  Feb 
ruary  18,  1902. 

MORAN,  THOMAS.  Born  at  Bolton,  England,  Janu 
ary  12,  1837;  came  to  America,  1844;  National  Acad 
emician,  1884;  still  living  in  New  York  City. 

KENSETT,  JOHN  FREDERICK.  Born  at  Chester,  Con 
necticut,  March  22,  1818;  in  Europe,  1840-44;  Na 
tional  Academician,  1849;  died  at  New  York  City, 
December  16,  1872. 

INNESS,  GEORGE.  Born  at  Newburgh,  New  York,  May 
1,  1825;  National  Academician,  1868;  died  at  Bridge 
of  Allan,  Scotland,  August  3,  1894. 

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WYANT,  ALEXANDER  H.    Born  at  Port  Washington, 
Ohio,  January  11,  1836;  studied  in  Germany  and  set 
tled  in  New  York,  1864 ;  suffered  paralytic  stroke,  1877, 
•  and  afterwards  painted  with  left  hand;  died  at  New 
York  City,  November  29,  1892. 

MARTIN,  HOMER  DODGE.  Born  at  Albany,  New 
York,  October  28,  1836;  opened  New  York  studio, 
1862;  National  Academician,  1875;  died  at  St.  Paul, 
Minnesota,  February  12,  1897. 

VEDDER,  ELIHU.  Born  at  New  York  City,  Febru 
ary  26,  1836;  in  Paris  and  Italy,  1856-61;  and,  after 
a  year  or  two  in  America,  returned  to  Italy,  where  he 
has  since  resided;  National  Academician,  1865. 

LA  FAROE,  JOHN.  Born  at  New  York  City,  March 
31,  1835;  studied  under  Couture  and  Hunt;  National 
Academician,  1869;  president  Society  of  American 
Artists  and  Society  of  Mural  Painters. 

HUNT,  WILLIAM  MORRIS.  Born  at  Brattleboro,  Ver 
mont,  March  31,  1824;  studied  under  Couture  and 
Millet,  1846-55;  opened  Boston  studio,  1856;  died  at 
Appledore,  Isles  of  Shoals,  New  Hampshire,  Septem 
ber  8,  1879. 

WHISTLER,  JAMES  ABBOTT  MCNEILL.  Born  at  Low 
ell,  Massachusetts,  1834;  entered  West  Point  Academy, 
1851,  but  soon  left;  settled  in  Paris,  1856,  and  studied 
art  two  years,  and  then  settled  in  London,  where  the 
remainder  of  his  life  was  passed;  died  there,  July  17, 
1903. 

HOMER,  WINSLOW.  Born  at  Boston,  February  24, 
1836;  accompanied  Army  of  Potomac  in  its  campaigns, 
1861-62;  National  Academician,  1865. 

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TRYON,  DWIGHT  WILLIAM,  Born  at  Hartford,  Con 
necticut,  August  13,  1849;  National  Academician, 
1891. 

MILLET,  FRANCIS  DAVIS.  Born  at  Mattapoisett, 
Massachusetts,  November  3,  1846;  drummer  60th 
Massachusetts  Volunteers,  1864;  graduated  at  Harvard, 
1869;  studied  at  Antwerp,  1871-72;  correspondent 
Eusso-Turkish  war,  1877-78;  director  of  decorations 
World's  Columbian  Exposition,  1892-93. 

ABBEY,  EDWIN  AUSTIN.  Born  at  Philadelphia,  April 
1,  1852;  educated  at  Philadelphia  Academy  of  Fine 
Arts;  went  to  England,  1878,  and  has  since  made  that 
his  home. 

SARGENT,  JOHN  SINGER.  Born  at  Florence,  Italy, 
1856;  studied  under  Carolus  Duran;  has  made  England 
his  home;  Royal  Academician,  1891;  National  Acad 
emician,  1897. 


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CHAPTER   Y 

SCULPTORS 

IF  background  and  tradition  are  needed  for  paint 
ing,  how  much  more  are  they  needed  for  sculp 
ture!  America  was  settled  by  a  people  entirely 
without  sculptural  tradition,  for,  in  the  early  seven 
teenth  century,  British  sculpture  did  not  exist. 
More  than  that,  to  most  of  the  settlers,  art,  in  what 
ever  form,  was  an  invention  of  the  devil,  to  be 
avoided  and  discouraged.  So  it  is  not  surprising  that 
two  centuries  elapsed  before  the  first  American 
statue  made  its  shy  and  awkward  appearance. 

In  considering  the  achievements  of  American 
sculpture,  we  must  remember  that  it  is  still  an  infant. 
That  it  is  a  lusty  infant  none  will  deny,  though  some 
may  find  it  lacking  in  that  grace  and  charm  which 
come  only  with  maturity. 

The  first  man  born  in  America  who  was  foolhardy 
enough  deliberately  to  choose  sculpture  as  a  profes 
sion  was  Horatio  Greenough,  born  in  1805,  of  well- 
to-do  parents,  and  carefully  educated.  It  is  difficult 
to  say  just  what  it  was  that  turned  the  boy  to  this 
difficult  and  exacting  art — an  unknown  art,  too,  so 
far  as  America  was  concerned.  But  he  seems  to  have 
begun  woodcarving  at  an  early  age,  and  to  have 

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progressed  from  that  to  chalk  and  on  to  plaster  of 
Paris.  The  American  national  habit  of  whittling 
was  perhaps  responsible  for  the  development  of  more 
than  one  sculptor. 

At  any  rate,  by  the  time  he  was  twelve  years  old, 
Horatio  Greenough  had  produced  some  portrait  busts 
in  chalk,  and,  after  having  tried  unsuccessfully  to 
learn  clay-modelling  from  directions  in  an  old  ency 
clopedia,  took  some  lessons  from  an  artist  who  chanced 
to  be  in  Boston,  and  from  a  maker  of  tombstones, 
got  a  little  insight  into  the  method  of  carving  marble. 

These  lessons,  elementary  as  they  must  have  been, 
were  very  valuable  to  the  boy,  and  his  work  showed 
such  promise  that  his  father  finally  consented  to  his 
adopting  this  strange  profession,  insisting  only  that 
he  first  graduate  from  Harvard,  on  the  ground  that 
a  college  education  would  be  of  value,  whatever  his 
vocation.  So  he  entered  college  at  the  age  of  six 
teen,  devoting  all  his  spare  time  to  reading  works  of 
art,  to  drawing  and  modelling,  and  the  study  of 
anatomy.  He  had  also  the  good  fortune  to  meet  and 
win  the  friendship  of  "Washington  Allston,  who  ad 
vised  him  as  to  plans  of  study. 

Immediately  upon  graduation,  he  sailed  for  Italy, 
which  was,  sadly  enough,  to  be  the  Mecca  of  Ameri 
can  sculptors  for  many  years  to  come.  For  Italian 
sculpture  was  bound  hand  and  foot  by  the  traditions 
of  classicism,  to  which  our  early  sculptors  soon  fell 
captive.  Greenough  was  no  exception,  and  some 
years  of  study  in  the  Italian  studios  rivetted  the 
chains. 

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Sculptors 

His  first  commission  was  given  him  by  J.  Feni- 
jnore  Cooper.  It  was  a  group  called  the  "  Chanting 
Cherubs/'  and  when  it  was  sent  home  for  exhibition, 
it  awakened  a  tempest  of  the  first  magnitude.  Puri 
tan  ideas  were  outraged  at  sight  of  the  little  naked 
bodies,  the  group  was  declared  indecent,  and  the 
bitter  controversy  was  not  stilled  until  it  was  with 
drawn  from  view.  Greenough  wrote  of  Cooper,  "  he 
saved  me'  from  despair;  he  employed  me  as  I  wished 
to  be  employed;  and  has,  up  to  this  moment,  been  a 
father  to  me  in  kindness  " — a  singularly  interesting 
addition  to  the  portrait  of  the  great  novelist,  famous 
for  his  enmities  rather  than  for  his  friendships. 

The  tragedy  of  Greenough's  life  was  the  fate 
of  his  great  statue  of  Washington,  of  which  we  have 
already  spoken.  He  conceived  the  work  on  a  high 
plane,  "  as  a  majestic,  god-like  figure,  enthroned  be 
neath  the  dome  of  the  Capitol  at  Washington,  gilded 
by  the  filtered  rays  of  the  far-falling  sunlight. "  Per 
haps  it  was  too  high,  but  on  its  execution  Greenough 
labored  faithfully  for  eight  years.  "  It  is  the  birth 
of  my  thought,"  he  wrote.  "  I  have  sacrificed  to  it 
the  flower  of  my  days,  and  the  freshness  of  my 
strength;  its  every  lineament  has  been  moistened  by 
the  sweat  of  my  toil  and  the  tears  of  my  exile.  I 
would  not  barter  away  its  association  with  my  name 
for  the  proudest  fortune  that  avarice  ever  dreamed." 

It  will  be  seen  from  the  above  that  Greenough's 
epistolary  style  was  florid  and  grandiose  in  the  ex 
treme,  but  no  doubt  there  was  a  foundation  of 
sincerity  beneath  it.  A  bitter  disappointment 

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awaited  him.  The  ponderous  figure  reached  Wash 
ington  safely  in  1843,  and  was  conveyed  to  the  Capi 
tol,  where,  beneath  the  rotunda,  its  predestined 
pedestal  awaited  it.  But  the  statue  was  found  too 
large  to  pass  the  door,  and  when  the  door  was 
widened  and  the  great  stone  rolled  inside,  the  floor 
settled  so  ominously  that  it  was  hastily  withdrawn. 

It  does  not  seem  to  have  occurred  to  anyone  that 
the  floor  might  be  braced;  instead,  the  pedestal  was 
set  up  outside,  facing  the  building,  and  the  statue 
hoisted  into  place.  It  speedily  became  the  butt  of 
public  ridicule.  Once  the  fashion  started,  no  one 
looked  at  it  without  a  smile. 

Greenough  was  in  despair.  "  Had  I  been  ordered 
to  make  a  statue  for  any  square  or  similar  situation 
at  the  metropolis/'  he  wrote,  still  in  his  inflated  style, 
"  I  should  have  represented  Washington  on  horse 
back  and  in  his  actual  dress.  I  would  have  made  my 
subject  purely  a  historical  one.  I  have  treated  my 
subject  poetically,  and  confess  I  would  feel  pain  in 
seeing  it  placed  in  direct  flagrant  contrast  with  every 
day  life." 

But  that  is  exactly  how  it  was  placed,  and  it  is  the 
incongruity  of  this  contrast  which  strikes  the  be 
holder  and  blinds  him  to  the  merits  of  the  work. 
For  Greenough  has  represented  Washington  seated 
in  a  massive  armchair,  naked  except  for  a  drapery 
over  the  legs  and  right  shoulder,  one  hand  pointing 
dramatically  at  the  heavens,  the  other  extended  hold 
ing  a  reversed  sword.  It  shows  sincerity  and  faithful 
work,  and  had  it  been  placed  within  the  rotunda, 

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Sculptors 

would  no  doubt  have  been  impressive  and  majestic* 
Where  it  stands,  it  is  a  hopeless  anachronism. 

This  was  the  first  colossal  marble  carved  by  an 
American.  Fronting  it  on  one  of  the  buttresses  of 
the  main  entrance  of  the  Capitol,  is  the  second,  also 
by  Greenough.  It  is  a  group  called  "  The  Rescue," 
and  shows  a  pioneer  saving  his  wife  and  child  from 
being  tomahawked  by  an  Indian,  while  his  dog 
watches  the  struggle  with  a  strange  apathy — almost 
with  a  smile.  Like  most  of  his  other  work,  it  is 
stilted  and  unconvincing;  but  let  us  remember  that 
Greenough  was  the  pathfinder,  the  trail-blazer,  and 
as  such  to  be  honored  and  admired. 

Greenough's  fame,  such  as  it  was,  was  soon  to  be 
eclipsed  by  that  of  a  man  born  in  the  same  year,  but 
later  in  development  because  he  had  a  harder  road 
to  travel.  Hiram  Powers  was  born  into  a  large  and 
poverty-stricken  family.  While  he  was  still  a  boy,, 
his  father  removed  from  the  sterile  hills  of  Vermont 
to  the  almost  frontier  town  of  Cincinnati,  Ohio.  He 
seems  to  have  had  little  schooling,  but  was  put  to 
work  as  soon  as  he  was  old  enough  to  contribute 
something  toward  the  family  exchequer.  He  did  all 
sorts  of  odd  jobs,  and  soon  developed  an  unusual 
talent,  that  of  modelling  faces. 

Those  were  the  halcyon  days  of  the  dime  museum, 
and  there  was  one  at  Cincinnati.  Its  proprietor 
chanced  to  hear  of  the  boy's  gift  for  modelling,  and 
offered  him  employment  as  a  modeller  of  wax  figures. 
Of  course  Powers  accepted,  for  this  was  work  after 
his  own  heart,  and  he  succeeded  not  only  in  produc- 

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ing  some  figures  which  resembled  definite  human 
beings,  but  "  breathed  the  breath  of  life  into  them  " 
by  means  of  clock-work  devices,  which  enabled  them 
to  move  their  heads  and  arms  in  a  manner  sufficiently 
jerky,  but  at  the  same  time  astonishing  to  the  simple 
people  who  visited  the  museum  to  behold  its  won 
ders. 

Emboldened  by  this  success,  the  young  genius  pro 
duced  an  "  Inferno,"  or  "  Chamber  of  Horrors," 
which,  when  completed,  was  an  immense  success — 
too  immense,  indeed,  for  it  had  to  be  closed  because 
of  the  fearful  impression  it  made  upon  the  ladies,  who 
fainted  in  their  escorts'  arms  whenever  they  gazed 
upon  its  terrors.  One  is  inclined  to  suspect  that  the 
ladies  might  have  withstood  the  horrors  of  the  sight, 
but  for  a  desire  to  prove  their  extreme  sensibility. 
Fainting  was  more  fashionable  eighty  years  ago  than 
it  is  to-day. 

Powers  soon  developed  from  this  work  a  talent  for 
catching  likenesses,  and,  searching  for  a  wider  field, 
proceeded  finally  to  Washington,  where  he  modelled 
busts  in  wax  of  Andrew  Jackson,  Daniel  Webster, 
John  C.  Calhoun,  John  Marshall,  and  other  celebri 
ties  of  the  period.  From  wax,  he  naturally  wished 
to  graduate  into  marble,  and  in  1837,  left  America 
for  Italy,  never  to  return.  Greenough,  then  laboring 
away  at  his  Washington,  assisted  him  in  various 
ways;  and  Hawthorne  met  him  in  Italy  and  was 
much  impressed  by  him,  as  his  "  Italian  Note-Book  " 
shows. 

In  1843,  he  completed  the  figure  which  was 
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destined  to  make  him  famous,  the  "  Greek  Slave." 
The  statue  was  supposed  to  represent  a  maiden  cap 
tured  by  the  Turks,  "  stripped  and  manacled  and 
offered  for  sale  in  the  market  place,"  and  so  had  a 
sentimental  appeal  which  went  straight  to  the  heart 
of  a  sentimental  people,  and  overcame  any  antagon 
ism  which  her  nudity  might  have  produced.  It  in 
spired  Elizabeth  Barrett  Browning  to  a  not  very 
noteworthy  sonnet,  clergymen  gave  it  certificates  of 
character,  so  to  speak,  and  "  it  made  a  sensation 
wherever  shown,  and  was  fondly  believed  to  be  the 
greatest  work  of  sculpture  known  to  history."  Let 
us  say  at  once  that  it  is  an  engaging  and  creditable 
piece  of  work,  and  worthy,  in  the  main,  of  the  enthu 
siasm  which  it  excited. 

The  "  Greek  Slave "  was  only  the  beginning. 
Powers  turned  out  one  statue  after  another  with  con 
siderable  rapidity,  but  his  reputation  rests  mainly  to 
day  on  his  portrait  busts  of  men.  It  is  characteristic 
of  artists  that  the  things  they  do  best  and  easiest  they 
value  least,  and  this  was  so  with  Powers.  His 
portrait  busts  were,  in  a  sense,  mere  pot-boilers;  he 
lavished  himself  upon  his  ideal  figures.  But  these  are 
now  ranked  as  unimaginative  and  commonplace. 

Third  among  our  early  sculptors  of  importance 
was  Thomas  Crawford,  born  eight  years  later  than 
Greenough  and  Powers,  and  preceding  the  latter  to 
the  grave  by  many  years,  yet  leaving  behind  him  a 
mass  of  work  which,  if  it  shows  no  great  imagination, 
displays  considerable  poetic  refinement.  Driven  to 
Italy  because  it  was  only  there  that  marble  work 

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could  be  well  and  economically  done,  he  lived  there 
for  some  years,  earning  a  bare  subsistence  by  the  pro 
duction  of  second-rate  portrait  busts  and  copies  of 
antique  statuary.  Then  he  attracted  the  attention  of 
Charles  Sumner,  and  with  his  help,  was  enabled,  in 
1839,  to  produce  his  first  important  work,  the 
"  Orpheus,"  now  in  the  Boston  Museum.  Many 
others  followed,  but  they  were  of  that  ideal  and  senti 
mental  type,  very  foreign  to  modern  taste. 

Crawford  was  an  indefatigable  workman,  and  few 
American  museums  are  without  one  or  more  examples 
of  his  product.  In  the  public  square  at  Richmond, 
Virginia,  stands  one  of  his  most  important  monu 
ments,  crowned  by  an  astonishing  equestrian  figure 
of  Washington,  which  he  himself  executed.  Two  of 
the  subordinate  statues  are  also  his — those  of  Patrick 
Henry  and  Thomas  Jefferson — and  represent  the 
best  work  he  ever  did. 

Another  of  his  productions  is  the  great  figure  of 
Freedom  which  crowns  the  dome  of  the  Capitol  at 
Washington,  not  unworthily.  By  a  fortunate  chance, 
which  the  sculptor  could  hardly  have  foreseen,  the 
bulky  and  roughly  modelled  figure  gains  airiness  and 
majesty  from  its  lofty  position,  where  its  sickly-sweet 
countenance  and  .clumsy  adornment  are  refined  by 
distance.  It  has  become,  in  a  way,  a  national  ideal, 
a  part  of  the  Republic. 

The  success  of  these  three  men  and  the  immense 
reputation  which  they  attained  naturally  attracted 
others  to  a  profession  whose  rewards  were  so  exalted. 
The  first  to  achieve  anything  like  an  enduring  repu- 

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tation  was  Henry  Kirke  Brown,  born  in  Massa 
chusetts  in  1814.  He  early  displayed  some  talent  for 
portrait  painting,  and  went  to  Boston  to  study  under 
Chester  Harding.  Chance  led  him  to  model  the  head 
of  a  friend,  and  the  result  was  so  interesting  that  he 
then  and  there  renounced  painting  for  sculpture. 

Naturally,  his  eyes  turned  to  Italy,  but  he  had  no 
money  to  take  him  there,  so  perforce  remained  at 
home,  getting  such  instruction  as  he  could.  In  1837, 
at  the  age  of  twenty-three,  he  produced  his  first 
marble  bust,  and  within  the  next  four  years,  had 
carved  at  least  forty  more,  besides  four  or  five 
figures.  From  all  this  work,  he  managed  to  save 
the  money  needed  for  the  trip  to  Italy,  but  after  four 
years  in  the  Italian  studios,  he  sailed  for  home  again. 
On  July  4,  1856,  the  second  equestrian  statue 
to  be  set  up  in  the  United  States  was  unveiled  in 
Union  Square,  New  York  City,  and  gave  Brown  a 
reputation  which  still  endures. 

It  is  a  statue  of  Washington,  and,  in  some  amazing 
fashion,  Brown  succeeded  in  producing  a  work  of  art, 
which,  in  some  respects,  has  never  been  surpassed  in 
America,  and  which  has  served  as  a  pattern  and  guide 
to  other  sculptors  from  that  day  to  this.  It  is  a 
sincere,  honest  and  dignified  embodiment  of  the  First 
American.  Brown  did  some  notable  work  after  that, 
but  none  of  it  possesses  the  high  inspiration  which 
produced  the  noble  and  commanding  figure  which 
dominates  Union  Square. 

We  have  said  that  it  was  the  second  equestrian 
statue  produced  in  America.  The  first  may  still  be 

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seen  by  all  who,  on  entering  or  leaving  the  White 
House,  glance  across  the  street  at  the  public  square 
beyond.  One  glance  is  certain  to  be  followed  by 
others,  for  that  statue  is  not  only  the  first,  it  is  the 
most  amazing  ever  set  up  in  a  public  place  in  this 
country.  It  has  divided  with  Greenough's  "  Washing 
ton,"  at  the  other  end  of  Pennsylvania  Avenue,  the 
horrors  of  being  a  national  joke.  Its  author  was 
Clarke  Mills,  and  its  inception  is  probably  unparal 
leled  in  the  history  of  sculpture. 

Mills  was  born  in  New  York  State  in  1815,  lost  his 
father  while  still  a  child,  and  at  the  age  of  thirteen 
was  driven  by  harsh  treatment  to  run  away  from  the 
uncle  with  whom  he  had  made  his  home.  Thence 
forward  he  supported  himself  in  any  way  he  could — 
as  farm-hand,  teamster,  canal-hand,  post-cutter,  and 
finally  as  cabinet  maker.  He  drifted  about  the  coun 
try;  to  New  Orleans,  and  finally  to  Charleston,  South 
Carolina,  where  he  learned  to  do  stucco  work,  and 
whiled  away  his  leisure  hours  by  modelling  busts  in 
clay. 

With  Yankee  ingenuity,  he  invented  a  process  of 
taking  a  cast  from  the  living  face,  and  this  simple 
method  of  getting  a  likeness  enabled  him  to  turn  out 
busts  so  rapidly  and  cheaply  that  he  had  all  the  work 
he  could  do.  He  was,  of  course,  anxious  to  try  his 
hand  at  marble,  and  procuring  a  block  of  native  Caro 
lina  stone,  hewed  out,  writh  infinite  labor,  a  bust  of 
that  South  Carolina  idol,  John  C.  Calhoun.  It  was 
the  best  bust  ever  made  of  that  celebrated  statesman, 
and  was  the  beginning  of  Mills's  good  fortune,  and  of 

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Sculptors 

the  sequence  of  events  which  resulted  in  his  statues 
of  the  hero  of  New  Orleans. 

For  his  Calhoun  attracted  much  attention  and  se 
cured  him  other  commissions — among  them,  one  for 
the  busts  of  Webster  and  Crittenden.  To  get  these,  he 
was  forced  to  go  to  Washington,  and  there  he  met  the 
Hon.  Cave  Johnson,  President  of  the  Jackson  Monu 
ment  Commission,  which  had  got  together  the  funds 
for  an  equestrian  statue  of  that  old  hero.  Johnson 
suggested  to  Mills  that  he  submit  a  design  for  this 
statue.  As  Mills  had  never  seen  either  General  Jack 
son  or  an  equestrian  statue,  and  had  only  the  vaguest 
idea  of  what  either  was  like,  he  naturally  felt  some 
doubt  of  his  ability  to  execute  such  a  work ;  but  John 
son  pointed  out  that  this  was  only  modesty,  and  so 
Mills  finally  evolved  a  design,  which  the  commission 
accepted. 

Then  he  went  to  work  on  his  model,  and  executed 
it  on  an  entirely  new  principle,  which  was  to  secure 
a  balanced  figure  by  bringing  the  hind  legs  of  the 
horse  under  the  centre  of  its  body.  Congress  donated 
for  the  bronze  of  the  statue  the  British  cannon  which 
Jackson  had  captured  at  New  Orleans,  and  after 
many  trials  and  disheartening  failures,  it  was  finally 
cast,  hoisted  into  place,  and  dedicated  on  the  eighth 
of  January,  1853. 

The  whole  country  gazed  at  it  in  wonder  and  ad 
miration,  for  surely  never  had  another  work  of  art  so 
unique  and  original  been  unveiled  in  any  land.  Mills 
had  balanced  his  horse  adroitly  on  his  hind  legs,  and 
represented  the  rider  as  clinging  calmly  to  this  peril- 

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ous  perch  and  doffing  his  chapeau  to  the  admiring 
multitude.  A  delighted  Congress  added  $20,000  to 
the  price  already  paid,  while  IsTew  Orleans  ordered  a 
Teplica  at  an  even  higher  figure.  Absurd  as  the 
statue  is,  it  yet  must  command  from  us  a  certain 
respect  for  the  enthusiast  who  designed  it.  Remem 
ber,  he  had  never  seen  an  equestrian  statue,  because 
there  was  none  in  the  country  for  him  to  see;  he  had 
no  notion  of  dignified  sculptural  treatment;  but  he 
did  what  he  could,  as  well  as  he  was  able. 

Mills  was  the  last  of  the  primitives,  for  following 
him  came  Erasmus  D.  Palmer  and  Thomas  Ball,  the 
two  men  wrho,  more  than  any  others,  shaped  the 
course  and  guided  the  development  of  American 
sculpture. 

Erasmus  Palmer  was  born  in  1817,  and  followed 
the  trade  of  a  carpenter.  But  in  the  odd  moments  of 
1845,  he  made  a  cameo  portrait  of  his  wife,  which 
was  a  rather  unusual  likeness.  Encouraged  by  this 
success,  he  practised  further,  and  ended  by  abandon 
ing  his  saws  and  planes  to  devote  his  whole  time  to 
carving  portraits.  But  the  constant  strain  so  weak 
ened  his  eyes,  that  he  was  about  to  return  to  carpen 
tering,  when  a  friend  suggested  that  he  try  his  hand 
at  modelling  in  clay.  The  result  was  the  "  Infant 
Ceres,"  modelled  from  one  of  his  own  children, 
which,  reproduced  in  marble,  created  a  sensation  at 
the  exhibitions  in  1850. 

From  that  moment,  Palmer's  career  was  steadily 
upwards.  It  culminated  eight  years  later  in  his  de 
lightful  figure,  the  "  White  Captive,"  reminiscent  in 

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Sculptors 

a  way  of  the  "  Greek  Slave,"  but  a  better  work  of 
art,  and  one  which  stands  among  the  most  charming 
achievements  of  American  sculpture.  One  of  its 
wonders,  too — wonder  that  an  untrained  hand  and  an 
unschooled  brain  should  have  been  able  to  create  a 
work  of  art  at  once  so  tender  and  so  firm.  Following 
it  came  some  admirable  portrait  busts;  and  finally,  in 
1862,  his  "  Peace  in  Bondage."  No  doubt  the  sculp 
tor's  beautiful  and  adequate  conception  sprang  from 
the  tragic  period  which  gave  it  birth ;  for  "  Peace  in 
Bondage  "  shows  a  winged  female  figure  leaning 
wearily  against  a  tree-trunk,  and  gazing  hopelessly 
into  space.  It  is  carved  in  high  relief,  with  great 
skill  and  insight.  In  fact,  nothing  finer  had  been 
produced  in  America. 

With  this  work,  American  art  may  be  said  to  have 
found  itself.  It  not  only  raised  the  standard  of 
achievement,  but  it  put  an  end  at  once  and  forever  to 
the  idea  that  study  in  Italy  was  necessary  to  artistic 
success.  For  only  once  did  Palmer  visit  Europe,  and 
then  it  was  to  stay  but  a  short  time.  In  fact,  Italy 
was  artistic  poison  for  many  men;  its  art  lacked 
originality  and  vigor,  and  it  sapped  the  native 
strength  of  many  of  the  Americans  who  worked  in  its 
studios. 

Thomas  Ball  was  an  exception  to  this;  for,  in  spite 
of  many  years  abroad,  he  remained  always  character 
istically  American.  He  comes  next  to  Palmer  in 
strength  and  rightness  of  achievement;  his  work,  like 
his  life,  was  earnest  and  noble. 

Thomas  Ball's  father  was  a  house  and  sign  painter 
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of  Boston,  with  some  artistic  skill,  which  he  passed 
on  to  his  son.  That  was  the  boy's  only  inheritance, 
and  when  his  father  died,  he  undertook  the  support 
of  the  family,  first  as  a  boy-of-all-work  in  the  New 
England  Museum,  and  then  as  a  cameo-cutter.  From 
that  he  graduated  naturally  to  engraving,  miniature 
painting,  and  finally  to  portraiture. 

His  first  attempt  at  modelling  resulted  in  a  bust  of 
Jenny  Lirid,  done  entirely  from  photographs,  which 
had  a  wide  vogue,  for  the  Swedish  Nightingale  was 
then  at  the  height  of  her  popularity.  Other  more  am 
bitious  work  followed,  and  finally,  at  the  age  of 
thirty-five,  he  was  able  to  realize  his  ambition  to 
study  in  the  studios  of  Florence.  But  he  found  the 
Italian  environment  less  inspiring  than  he  had  hoped, 
and  two  years  later  he  was  back  in  Boston,  working 
on  an  equestrian  statue  of  Washington — the  first 
equestrian  group  in  JSTew  England  and  the  fourth  in 
the  United  States.  He  built  his  plaster  model  with, 
his  own  hands,  and  was  three  years  getting  it  ready. 
The  result  was  a  work  which  ranks  among  the  first 
equestrian  statues  of  the  country.  Other  works  of 
importance  followed,  among  them  the  well-known, 
emancipation  group  showing  Lincoln  blessing  a 
kneeling  slave,  which  was  unveiled  at  Washington 
in  1875. 

The  years  touched  Ball  lightly,  and  at  seventy 
years  of  age,  he  undertook  his  greatest  work,  an. 
elaborate  Washington  monument  for  the  town  of 
Methuan,  Massachusetts.  The  principal  figure,  a 
gigantic  Washington  in  bronze,  was  exhibited  at  the 

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Sculptors 

Columbian  Exposition  of  1893,  and  received  the 
highest  honors  of  the  exposition — a  distinction  it 
richly  merited  by  its  nobility  of  a  conception  and  ex 
ecution.  Thomas  Ball,  indeed,  set  a  new  standard 
in  public  statuary,  and  one  which  no  successor  has 
dared  to  disregard.  The  far-reaching  effects  of  his 
influence  and  that  of  Erasmus  Palmer  can  hardly  be 
over-estimated. 

One  of  the  most  engaging  and  versatile  personali 
ties  in  the  whole  range  of  American  art  was  that  of 
"William  "Wetmore  Story.  Born  at  Salem,  Massa 
chusetts,  in  1819,  graduated  at  Harvard,  admitted  to 
the  bar,  the  author  of  a  volume  of  graceful  verse  and 
of  a  valuable  life  of  his  father,  Chief  Justice  Storj, 
lie  yet,  in  1851,  put  all  this  work  aside,  adopted 
sculpture  as  a  profession,  and,  proceeding  to  Rome, 
Opened  a  studio  there. 

It  was  from  the  first  an  extraordinary  studio,  at 
tracting  the  most  brilliant  people  of  Rome  in  litera 
ture  as  well  as  art;  and  if  Story  did  not  quite  practise 
the  perfection  he  was  somewhat  fond  of  preaching, 
it  was  because  of  his  very  versatility,  which  absorbed 
his  talent  in  so  many  directions  that  it  could  not  be 
concentrated  in  any.  His  imagination  outran  his 
achievement,  and  the  most  famous  of  his  works,  his 
statue  of  Cleopatra,  owes  its  reputation  not  so  much 
to  its  own  merit,  which  is  far  from  overwhelming, 
as  to  the  ecstatic  description  of  it  which  Nathaniel 
Hawthorne  included  in  "  The  Marble  Faun.'7  A 
master  of  literature  is  not  necessarily  an  inspired 
-critic  of  art,  and  it  is  to  be  suspected  that  Hawthorne 

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permitted  some  of  the  fire  of  his  imagination  to  play 
about  the  cold  and  uninspired  marble. 

"  Cleopatra  "  marked  Story's  culmination.  He  fell 
away  from  it  year  by  year,  producing  a  long  line  of 
figures  whose  only  impressive  features  were  the 
names  he  gave  them — "  The  Libyan  Sibyl,"  "  Semi- 
rarnis,"  "  Salome/'  "  Medea/7  and  so  on.  However, 
he  did  much  to  increase  the  popularity  of  sculpture, 
for  the  stories  he  attempted  to  tell  in  stone  by  means 
of  heavy-browed,  frowning  women  in  classic  costume 
and  with  classic  names,  were  exactly  suited  to  the 
child-like  intelligence  of  his  public.  He  gave  art,  too 
— as  William  Penn  gave  the  Quakers — a  sort  of 
social  sanction  because  of  his  own  social  position.  If 
the  son  of  Chief  Justice  Story  could  turn  sculptor, 
surely  that  profession  was  not  so  irregular,  after  all ! 

Another  sculptor  who  shared  with  Story  the  ad 
miration  of  the  public  was  Randolph  Rogers,  born  at 
"Waterloo,  New  York,  in  1825.  Until  the  age  of 
twenty-three  such  modelling  as  he  did  was  done  in 
the  spare  moments  of  a  business  life;  but  when  he 
gave  an  exhibition  of  the  results  of  this  labor,  his 
employers  were  so  impressed  that  they  provided  the 
money  needed  to  send  him  to  Italy,  where  he  was  to 
spend  the  remainder  of  his  life,  with  the  exception  of 
five  years'  residence  in  New  York.  Two  of  his 
earlier  figures  are  his  most  famous,  his  "  Nydia  "  and 
his  "  Lost  Pleiad."  Scores  of  replicas  in  marble  of 
these  two  figures  were  made  during  their  author's 
life  time,  and  they  still  retain  for  many  people  a 
simple  and  pathetic  charm.  Nearly  every  one,  of 

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course,  has  made  the  acquaintance  of  Nydia,  the  blind 
girl,  in  Bulwer-Lytton's  "  The  Last  Days  of  Pom 
peii,"  and  so  gaze  at  Rogers's  fleeing  figure  with  eyes 
too  sympathetic  to  see  its  faults. 

Far  more  important  is  the  work  of  "William  H. 
Kinehart,  of  the  same  age  as  Rogers,  and  resembling 
him  somewhat  in  development.  Born  on  a  Maryland 
farm,  his  early  years  were  those  of  the  average 
farmer's  boy,  but  at  last  some  blind  instinct  led  him 
to  abandon  farming  for  stonecutting,  and  he  became 
assistant  to  a  mason  and  stonecutter  of  the  neighbor 
hood.  As  soon  as  he  had  learned  his  trade,  at  the  age 
of  twenty-one,  he  went  to  Baltimore,  where  there 
was  work  in  plenty,  and  where  he  could,  at  the  same 
time,  attend  the  night  schools  of  the  Maryland  In 
stitute.  This  sounds  much  easier  than  it  really  was. 
To  devote  the  evenings  to  study,  after  ten  and  often 
twelve  hours  of  the  hardest  of  all  manual  labor,  re 
quired  grit  and  moral  courage  such  as  few  possess. 

He  was  soon  trying  his  hand  at  modelling,  and  con 
vinced,  at  last,  that  sculpture  was  his  vocation,  he 
managed,  by  the  time  he  was  thirty,  to  save  enough 
money  for  a  short  period  of  study  at  Home.  Three 
years  of  work  at  Baltimore,  after  that,  gave  him  some 
reputation,  and  he  then  returned  to  Rome,  to  spend 
the  remainder  of  his  life  there. 

If  you  have  ever  visited  the  Metropolitan  Museum 
of  Art  in  ISTew  York  City,  you  have  seen,  in  the  hall 
of  statuary,  one  of  Rinehart's  most  characteristic 
groups,  "Latona  and  Her  Children."  The  mother 
half  seated,  half  lying  upon  the  ground,  gazes  tender- 

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ly  down  at  the  two  sleeping  children,  sheltered  in 
the  folds  of  her  mantle.  The  whole  work  possesses  a 
serene  poetic  charm  and  dignity  very  noteworthy ;  and 
this  and  other  groups  are  among  the  most  beautiful 
that  any  American  ever  turned  out  of  an  Italian 
studio. 

Rinehart  was  one  of  the  last  American  disciples  of 
the  classic  school.  Certainly  no  art  could  have  been 
more  opposed  to  his  than  the  frank  and  vivid  realism 
of  his  immediate  successor,  John  Rogers.  Born  in 
Salem,  Massachusetts,  the  son  of  a  family  of  mer 
chants,  he  was  educated  in  the  common  schools, 
worked  for  a  time  in  a  store,  and  then  entered  a 
machine  shop  as  an  apprentice,  working  up  through 
all  the  grades,  until  finally  he  was  in  charge  of  a  rail 
road  repair  shop. 

During  all  these  years  he  had  no  suspicion  of 
artistic  talent  within  himself,  but  one  day  in  Boston 
he  happened  to  see  a  man  modelling  some  images  in 
clay.  In  that  instant,  the  artist  instinct  clutched  him, 
and  procuring  some  clay  and  modelling  tools,  he  spent 
all  his  leisure  in  practice.  This  leisure  was  scant 
enough,  for  his  trade  kept  him  employed  fourteen 
hours  of  every  day ;  but  at  the  age  of  twenty-nine  he 
was  able  to  secure  an  eight  months'  vacation,  which 
he  spent  in  Europe,  principally  at  Paris  and  Rome. 
He  returned  to  America  greatly  discouraged,  for  the 
only  thing  he  saw  in  Europe  was  classic  sculpture, 
with  which  he  had  no  sympathy  and  which,  indeed, 
lie  could  not  understand. 

So,  abandoning  all  thought  of  making  sculpture  a 
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Sculptors 

profession,  lie  went  to  work  as  a  draughtsman  in 
Chicago,  amusing  himself,  at  odd  hours,  by  the  con 
struction  of  a  group  of  small  figures,  which  he  called 
"The  Checker  Players.77  It  was  exhibited  at  a 
charity  fair,  and  awakened  so  much  interest  and  de 
light  that  Rogers  burned  his  bridges  behind  him  by 
resigning  his  position,  and  proceeded  to  New  York, 
and  rented  a  studio,  determined  to  be  a  sculptor  in 
spite  of  classicism. 

The  outbreak  of  the  Civil  War  furnished  him  a 
host  of  subjects  which  he  treated  with  a  patriotic 
fervor  that  went  straight  to  the  heart  of  an  over 
wrought  people.  "  The  Returned  Volunteer,77  "  The 
Picket-Guard,77  "  The  Sharp-shooters,77  "  The  Camp- 
fire,77  "  One  More  Shot,77  and  many  others,  came  from 
his  studio  in  rapid  succession.  They  were  all  thor 
oughly  American,  and  some  were  even  admirably 
sculptural.  They,  at  least,  stood  for  an  original  idea, 
and  deserve  better  treatment  than  the  silent  contempt 
which,  in  these  days,  is  about  all  that  has  been 
accorded  them. 

At  about  this  time,  there  came  upon  the  scene  the 
first  and  only  really  famous  woman  sculptor  in  the 
history  of  American  art,  Harriet  Hosmer.  She  had 
had  an  unusual  childhood,  and  had  grown  into  an 
original  and  engaging  woman.  Born  in  1830,  at 
"Watertown,  Massachusetts,  the  daughter  of  a  phy 
sician,  she  inherited  her  mothers  delicate  constitu 
tion,  and  her  father  encouraged  her  in  an  outdoor 
life  of  physical  exercise  such  as  only  boys,  at  that 
time,  were  accustomed  to.  She  became  expert  in 

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rowing,  riding,  skating  and  shooting,  developed  great 
•endurance,  filled  her  room  with  snakes  and  insects 
and  birds'  nests,  and  in  a  clay  pit  at  the  end  of  her 
father's  garden  modelled  rude  figures  of  animals. 

A  few  years  of  schooling  followed  this  wild  girl 
hood;  then  she  was  sent  to  Boston  to  study  drawing 
and  modelling;  but  finding  that  no  woman  would  be 
admitted  to  the  Boston  Medical  School,  whose  course 
in  anatomy  she  was  anxious  to  take,  she  went  to  St. 
Louis  and  entered  the  medical  college  there.  Fin 
ally,  in  1852,  accompanied  by  her  father  and  Char 
lotte  Cushman,  she  set  sail  for  Italy. 

She  remained  there  for  eight  years,  turning  out  a 
number  of  very  creditable  figures,  which,  if  not  great, 
at  least  possess  some  measure  of  grace  and  charm. 
Nathaniel  Hawthorne,  in  his  "  Italian  ^Tote-Book," 
has  left  a  vivid  impression  of  Miss  Hosmer,  whose 
eccentricity  of  dress  and  manner  impressed  him 
deeply,  as  did  also  the  work  which  she  showed  him. 
But  she  never  reached  any  high  development. 

AVhich  brings  us  to  the  present  of  American  art, 
for  the  sculptors  we  have  yet  to  consider  are  either 
yet  alive  or  have  died  so  recently  that  they  belong  to 
the  present  rather  than  the  past. 

The  first  and  one  of  the  most  important  of  these 
is  John  Quincy  Adams  Ward,  born  in  1830  on  an 
Ohio  farm.  An  accident  showed  the  possession  of 
latent  talent,  for  some  good  pottery  clay  happened 
to  be  discovered  on  his  father's  farm,  and  his  guard 
ian  angel  inspired  the  boy  to  take  a  handful  of  it  and 
model  the  grotesque  countenance  of  a  negro  servant. 

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Sculptors 

The  result  was  striking,  and  no  doubt  he  felt  within 
himself  some  of  the  stirrings  of  genius,  but  not  until 
1849  did  he  realize  his  vocation.  Then,  while  on  a 
visit  to  a  sister  in  Brooklyn,  he  happened  to  pass  the 
open  door  of  H.  K.  Brown's  studio.  The  glimpse 
he  caught  of  the  scene  within  fascinated  him;  he  re 
turned  again  and  again,  and  ended  by  entering  the 
studio  as  a  pupil. 

He  could  have  found  no  better  master,  and  for 
seven  years  he  remained  there,  assisting  Brown  in 
every  detail  of  his  work.  His  first  group,  modelled 
after  long  study,  was  his  "Indian  Hunter,"  now 
placed  in  Central  Park,  New  York — a  group  instinct 
with  vitality — a  glimpse  of  a  forgotten  past,  evoked 
with  the  skill  of  a  master.  It  was  the  first  of  a  long 
line  of  statues,  many  of  them  portraits  of  contempo 
raries,  a  field  in  which  Ward  has  no  superior.  It  is 
perhaps  the  highest  tribute  which  could  be  paid  the 
man  to  say  that,  with  all  his  great  production,  he  has 
never  done  bad  work,  never  produced  anything  tri 
fling  or  unworthy. 

A  fellow  student  with  Ward  in  Henry  Kirke 
Brown's  studio  was  Larkin  G.  Meade,  the  first  in 
dication  of  whose  talent  was  a  unique  one.  One 
winter  morning,  about  the  middle  of  the  century,  the 
good  people  of  Brattleboro,  Vermont,  were  aston 
ished  to  find  set  up  in  one  of  the  public  squares  of 
the  town  a  colossal  snow  image,  in  the  form  of  a 
majestic  angel — crude,  no  doubt,  in  execution,  but 
singularly  effective.  Inquiry  developed  that  it  was 
the  work  of  young  Meade,  then  only  fifteen  years  of 

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age.  The  incident  got  into  the  newspapers,  magnified 
considerably,  and  attracted  the  attention  of  old 
.Nicholas  Longworth,  of  Cincinnati,  who,  011  more 
than  one  occasion,  had  himself  appeared  as  angel  to 
struggling  artists. 

It  was  so  in  this  case.  Mr.  Longworth  wrote  to 
Brattleboro,  making  some  inquiries  as  to  the  essential 
truth  of  the  story,  and  having  satisfied  himself  on 
that  point,  offered  to  help  the  boy  to  get  an  artistic 
education.  The  offer  was  accepted,  and  young  Meade 
was  placed  in  Brown's  studio,  going  afterwards  to 
Italy.  While  there,  he  heard  of  the  assassination  of 
President  Lincoln,  and  prepared  an  elaborate  design 
in  plaster  for  a  national  monument  to  the  martyred 
President's  memory.  As  soon  as  this  was  completed, 
he  started  for  home  with  it,  arriving  at  precisely  the 
right  moment.  The  rage  for  monument  building 
was  sweeping  up  and  down  the  land.  Councils,  legis 
latures,  all  sorts  of  public  and  private  bodies,  were 
making  appropriations  to  commemorate  some  particu 
lar  hero  of  the  Civil  "War,  which  was  just  ended; 
Meade's  design  appealed  to  the  popular  imagination, 
and  the  commission  was  awarded  him. 

The  monument,  which  was  destined  to  cost  a 
quarter  of  a  million  dollars,  was  by  far  the  most  im 
portant  that  had  ever  been  erected  in  this  country, 
and  the  inexperienced  young  sculptor  sailed  back  to 
Italy  to  begin  work.  Not  until  1874  was  it  suffi 
ciently  completed  to  dedicate,  and  the  last  group  of 
statuary  was  not  put  in  place  until  ten  years  later. 
All  this  time,  the  sculptor  had  spent  quietly  in  hia 

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Sculptors 

studio  at  Florence,  quite  apart  from  the  world  of 
progress  or  of  new  ideas  in  art,  and  long  before  his 
work  was  finished,  public  taste  had  outgrown  it  and 
found  it  uninspired  and  commonplace. 

Much  more  important  to  American  art  is  the  work 
of  Olin  Levi  Warner,  the  son  of  an  itinerant  Method 
ist  preacher,  whose  wanderings  prevented  the  boy 
getting  any  regular  schooling.  During  his  childhood, 
he  had  shown  considerable  talent  for  carving  statu 
ettes  in  chalk,  and  he  finally  decided  to  immortalize 
his  father  by  carving  a  portrait  bust  of  him.  For  a 
stone,  he  "  set "  a  barrel  of  plaster  in  one  solid  mass 
and  then,  breaking  off  the  staves,  began  hacking 
away  at  it  with  such  poor  implements  as  he  could 
command.  It  was  a  well-nigh  endless  task,  but  "  it's 
dogged  that  does  it,"  and  the  boy  worked  doggedly 
away  until  the  bust  was  completed.  It  was  con 
sidered  such  a  success  that  young  Warner,  convinced 
of  his  vocation,  set  to  work  to  earn  enough  money 
to  go  abroad.  For  six  years  he  worked  as  a  teleg 
rapher,  and  it  was  not  until  1869,  when  he  was 
twenty-five  years  old,  that  he  had  saved  the  money 
needed. 

Three  years  later  he  returned  to  JSTew  York,  and 
opened  a  studio,  but  met  with  a  reception  so  dismal 
and  indifferent  that,  after  a  four  years'  desperate 
struggle,  he  was  forced  to  abandon  the  fight  andi 
return  to  his  father's  farm.  Anxious  for  any  employ 
ment,  he  applied  to  Henry  Plant,  President  of  the 
Southern  Express  Company,  for  work.  Mr.  Plant 
was  interested,  and  instead  of  offering  him  a  job  as 

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messenger  or  teamster,  gave  him  a  commission  for 
two  portrait  busts. 

It  was  the  turning  point  in  Warner's  career,  for 
the  busts  he  produced  were  of  a  craftsmanship  so 
delicate  and  beautiful  that  they  at  once  established 
his  position  among  his  fellow-sculptors,  though  years 
elapsed  before  he  received  any  wide  public  recogni 
tion.  The  truth  is  that  he  was  too  great  and  sincere 
an  artist  to  cater  to  a  public  taste  which  he  had  him 
self  outgrown;  so  that,  until  quite  recently,  he  has 
remained  a  sculptor's  sculptor.  His  untimely  death, 
in  1896,  from  the  effects  of  a  fall  while  riding  in 
Central  Park,  brought  forth  a  notable  tribute  from 
his  fellow-craftsmen,  and  students  of  sculpture  have 
come  to  recognize  in  him  one  of  the  most  delicate  and 
truly  inspired  artists  in  our  history. 

But  the  most  powerful  influence  in  the  recent  de 
velopment  of  American  sculpture  has  been  that  great 
artist,  Augustus  Saint  Gaudens.  Born  in  1848,  at 
Dublin,  Ireland,  of  a  French  father  and  an  Irish 
mother,  he  was  brought  to  this  country  while  still  an 
infant.  Perhaps  this  mixed  ancestry  explains  to  some 
degree  Saint  Gaudens's  peculiar  genius.  At  the  age 
of  thirteen,  he  was  apprenticed  to  a  cameo-cutter  in 
New  York  City,  and  worked  for  six  years  at  this 
employment,  which  demands  the  utmost  keenness  of 
vision,  delicacy  of  touch,  and  refinement  of  manner. 
His  evenings  he  spent  in  studying  drawing,  first  at 
Cooper  Union  and  then,  outgrowing  that,  at  the 
National  Academy  of  Design.  So  it  happened  that, 
at  the  age  of  twenty,  when  most  men  were  just  begin- 

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Sculptors 

ning  their  special  studies,  Saint  Gaudens  was  thor 
oughly  grounded  in  drawing  and  an  expert  in  low 
relief. 

Another  thing  he  had  learned;  and  let  us  pause 
here  to  lay  stress  upon  it,  for  it  is  the  thing  which 
must  be  learned  before  any  great  life-work  can  be 
done.  He  had  learned  the  value  of  systematic  in 
dustry,  of  putting  in  so  many  hours  every  day  at 
faithful  work.  The  weak  artist,  whether  in  stone  or 
paint  or  ink,  always  contends  that  he  must  wait  for 
inspiration,  and  so  excuses  long  periods  of  unpro 
ductive  idleness,  during  which  he  grows  weaker  and 
weaker  for  lack  of  exercise.  The  great  artist  compels 
inspiration  by  whipping  himself  to  his  work  and  set 
ting  grimly  about  it,  knowing  that  the  "  inspiration," 
so-called,  will  come.  For  inspiration  is  only  seeing  a 
thing  clearly,  and  the  one  way  to  see  it  clearly  is  to 
keep  the  eyes  and  mind  fixed  upon  it. 

At  the  age  of  twenty,  then,  Saint  Gaudens  was  not 
only  a  trained  artist,  but  an  industrious  one.  Three 
years  in  the  inspiring  atmosphere  of  Paris,  and  three 
years  in  Italy,  followed;  and  finally,  in  1874,  he 
landed  again  at  New  York  with  such  an  equipment 
as  few  sculptors  ever  had.  And  seven  years  later  he 
proved  his  mastery  when  his  statue  of  Admiral  Far- 
ragut  was  unveiled  in  Union  Square,  New  York. 
That  superb  work  of  art  made  its  author  a  national 
figure,  and  Saint  Gaudens  took  definitely  that  place 
at  the  head  of  American  sculpture  which  was  his 
until  his  death. 

Six  years  later  Saint  Gaudens's  "  Lincoln  "  was 
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unveiled  in  Lincoln  Park,  Chicago,  and  was  at  once 
recognized  as  the  greatest  portrait  statue  in  the 
United  States.  It  has  remained  so — a  masterpiece  of 
exalted  conception  and  dignified  execution.  Other 
statues  followed,  each  memorable  in  its  way;  but 
Saint  Gaudens  proved  himself  not  only  the  greatest 
but  the  most  versatile  of  our  sculptors  by  his  work  in 
other  fields — by  portraits  in  high  and  low  relief,  by 
ideal  figures,  and  notably  by  the  memorial  to  Robert 
Gould  Shaw,  a  work  distinctively  American  and  with 
out  a  counterpart  in  the  annals  of  art.  It  is  the 
spiritual  quality  of  Saint  Gaudens's  work  which  sets 
it  apart  upon  a  lofty  pinnacle — the  largeness  of  the 
man  behind  it,  the  artist  mind  and  the  poet  heart. 

Saint  Gaudens's  death  in  1907  deprived  American 
art  of  one  of  its  most  commanding  figures,  but  there 
are  other  American  sculptors  alive  to-day  whose  work 
is  noteworthy  in  a  high  degree.  One  of  these  is 
Daniel  Chester  French.  Born  of  a  substantial  !New 
England  family,  and  showing  no  especial  artistic 
talent  in  youth,  one  day,  in  his  nineteenth  year,  he 
surprised  his  family  by  showing  them  the  grotesque 
figure  of  a  frog  in  clothes  which  he  had  carved  from 
a  turnip.  Modelling  tools  were  secured  for  him,  and 
he  went  to  work.  The  schooling  which  prepared  him 
for  his  remarkable  career  was  of  the  slightest.  He 
studied  for  a  month  with  J".  Q.  A.  Ward,  and  for  the 
rest,  worked  out  his  own  salvation  as  best  he  could. 

His  first  important  commission  came  to  him  at  the 
age  of  twenty-three — the  figure  of  the  "  Minute 
Man  "  for  the  battle  monument  at  Concord,  Massa- 

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Sculptors 

chusetts.  It  was  unveiled  on  April  19,  1875,  and 
attracted  wide  attention.  For  here  was  a  work  of 
strength  and  originality  produced  by  a  young  man. 
without  schooling  or  experience — produced,  too, 
without  a  model,  or,  at  least,  from  nothing  but  a 
large  cast  of  the  "  Apollo  Belvidere,"  which  was  the 
only  model  the  sculptor  had.  But  there  was  no  hint 
of  that  famous  figure  under  the  clothes  of  the  "  Min 
ute  Man."  It  had  been  entirely  concealed  by  the 
personality  and  vigor  he  had  impressed  upon  his 
work. 

After  that  Mr.  French  spent  a  year  in  Florence, 
but  he  returned  to  America  at  the  end  of  that  period 
to  remain.  He  has  grown  steadily  in  power  and 
certainty  of  touch,  rising  perhaps  to  his  greatest 
height  in  his  famous  group,  "  The  Angel  of  Death 
and  the  Young  Sculptor,"  intended  as  a  memorial  to 
Martin  Milmore,  but  touching  the  universal  heart  by 
its  deep  appeal,  conveyed  with  a  sure  and  admirable 
artistry.  Mr.  French's  great  distinction  is  to  have 
created  good  sculpture  which  has  touched  the  public 
heart,  and  to  have  done  this  with  no  concession  to 
public  taste. 

Another  sculptor  who  has  gained  a  wide  apprecia 
tion  is  Frederick  MacMonnies,  who  for  sheer  audac 
ity  and  dexterity  of  manipulation  is  almost  without 
a  rival.  He  was  born  in  Brooklyn  in  1863,  his  father 
a  Scotchman  who  had  come  to  New  York  at  the  age 
of  eighteen,  and  his  mother  a  niece  of  Benjamin 
"West.  The  boy's  talent  revealed  itself  early,  and  was 
developed  in  the  face  of  many  difficulties.  Obliged 

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to  leave  school  while  still  a  child  and  to  earn  his 
living  as  a  clerk  in  a  jewelry  store,  he  still  found 
time  to  study  drawing,  and  at  the  age  of  sixteen  had 
the  good  fortune  to  attract  the  attention  of  Saint 
Gaudens,  who  received  him  as  an  apprentice  in  his 
studio. 

No  better  fate  could  have  befallen  the  lad,  and  the 
five  years  spent  with  Saint  Gaudens  gave  him  the 
best  of  all  training  in  the  fundamentals  of  his  art. 
Some  years  in  Paris  followed,  where  he  replenished 
his  slender  purse  with  such  work  as  he  could  find  to 
do,  until,  in  1889,  his  "Diana"  emerged  from  his 
studio,  radiant  and  superb.  A  year  later  came  his 
statue  of  "  Nathan  Hale,"  and  there  was  never  any 
lack  of  commissions  after  that.  "  Nathan  Hale  " 
stands  in  City  Hall  Park,  New  York  City,  the  very 
embodiment  of  that  devoted  young  patriot.  The 
artist  has  shown  him  at  the  supreme  moment  when, 
facing  the  scaffold,  he  uttered  the  memorable  words 
which  still  thrill  the  American  heart,  and  expression 
and  sentiment  were  never  more  perfectly  in  accord. 
He  struck  the  same  high  note  with  his  famous  foun 
tain  at  Chicago  Exposition,  where  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  people  suddenly  discovered  in  this 
young  man  a  national  possession  to  be  proud  of. 

A  year  later  his  name  was  again  in  every  mouth, 
when  the  Boston  Public  Library  refused  a  place  to 
perhaps  his  greatest  work,  the  dancing  "  Bacchante," 
which  has  since  found  refuge  in  the  Metropolitan 
Museum  at  New  York — a  composition  so  original 
and  daring  that  it  astonishes  while  it  delights. 

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Sculptors 

Like  MacMonnies,  George  Gray  Barnard  began 
life  as  a  jeweller's  apprentice,  became  an  expert 
engraver  and  letterer,  and  finally,  urged  by  a  cease 
less  longing,  deserted  that  lucrative  profession  for  the 
extremely  uncertain  one  of  sculpture.  A  year  and 
a  half  of  study  in  Chicago  brought  him  an  order  for 
a  portrait  bust  of  a  little  girl,  and  with  the  $350  he 
received  for  this,  he  set  off  for  Paris.  That  meagre 
sum  supported  him  for  three  years  and  a  half — 
with  what  privation  and  self-denial  may  be  imag 
ined;  but  he  never  complained.  He  lived,  indeed, 
the  life  of  a  recluse,  shutting  himself  up  in  his 
studio  with  his  work,  emerging  only  at  night  to 
walk  the  streets  of  Paris,  lost  in  dreams  of  ambi 
tion.  That  from  this  period  of  ordeal  came  some 
of  the  deep  emotion  which  marks  his  work  cannot  be 
doubted. 

This  quality,  which  sets  Barnard  apart,  is  well 
illustrated  in  his  famous  group,  "  The  Two  Natures," 
suggested  by  a  line  of  Victor  Hugo,  "  I  feel  two 
natures  struggling  within  me."  Two  male  figures 
are  shown,  heroic  in  size  and  powerfully  modelled,  a 
victor  half  erect  bending  over  a  prostrate  foe. 

Besides  these  men,  who  are,  in  a  way,  the  giants 
of  the  American  sculptors  of  to-day,  there  are, 
especially  in  iSTew  York,  many  others  whose  work  is 
graceful  and  distinctive.  Paul  "Wayland  Bartlett, 
Herbert  Adams,  Charles  Niehaus,  John  J.  Boyle, 
Frank  Elwell,  Frederick  Kuckstuhl,  to  mention  only 
a  few  of  them,  are  all  men  of  originality  and  power, 
whose  work  is  a  pleasure  and  an  inspiration,  and  to 

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whose  hands  the  future  of  American  sculpture  may 
safely  be  confided. 


SUMMARY 

GREENOUGH,  HORATIO.  Born  at  Boston,  September 
6,  1805;  graduated  at  Harvard,  1825;  went  to  Italy, 
1825,  and  made  his  home  there,  with  the  exception  of 
short  visits  to  America  and  France ;  died  at  Somerville, 
Massachusetts,  December  18,  1852. 

POWERS,  HIRAM.  Born  at  Woodstock,  Vermont, 
July  29,  1805;  modelled  wax  figures  at  Cincinnati, 
Ohio,  for  seven  years;  went  to  Washington,  1835,  and 
to  Florence,  1837;  died  there,  June  27,  1873. 

CRAWFORD,  THOMAS.  Born  at  New  York  City,  March 
22,  1814;  went  to  Italy,  1834,  and  took  up  residence  at 
Eome  for  the  remainder  of  his  life;  afflicted  with  sud 
den  blindness  in  1856,  and  died  at  London,  October  16, 
1857. 

BROWN,  HENRY  KIRKE.  Born  at  Leyden,  Massachu 
setts,  February  24,  1814;  studied  in  Italy,  1842-46; 
opened  Brooklyn  studio,  1850;  died  at  Newburgh,  New 
York,  July  10,  1886. 

MILLS,  CLARKE.  Born  in  Onondaga  County,  New 
York,  December  1,  1815;  died  at  Washington,  January 
12,  1883. 

PALMER,  ERASTUS  Dow.  Born  at  Pompey,  Onon 
daga  County,  New  York,  April  2,  1817;  opened  studio 
in  Albany,  1849;  in  Paris,  1873-74;  died  at  Albany, 
New  York,  March  9,  1904. 

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BALL,  THOMAS.  Born  at  Charlestown,  Massachu 
setts,  June  3,  1819;  practised  painting,  1840-52; 
adopted  sculpture,  1851 ;  resided  in  Florence,  Italy, 
1865-97;  opened  New  York  studio,  1898. 

STORY,  WILLIAM  WETMORE.  Born  at  Salem,  Massa 
chusetts,  February  19,  1819;  graduated  at  Harvard, 
1838;  admitted  to  the  bar,  1840;  published  a  volume 
of  poems,  1847;  went  to  Italy,  1848,  and  lived  at  Flor 
ence  until  his  death,  October  5,  1895. 

EOGERS,  RANDOLPH.  Born  at  Waterloo,  New  York, 
July  6,  1825;  removed  to  Italy,  1855;  died  at  Borne, 
January  15,  1892. 

RINEHART,  WILLIAM  HENRY.  Born  in  Maryland, 
September  13,  1825;  removed  to  Rome,  1858,  and  died 
there,  October  28,  1874. 

ROGERS,  JOHN.  Born  at  Salem,  Massachusetts,  Oc 
tober  30,  1829;  visited  Europe,  1858-59;  died,  July  27, 
1004. 

HOSMER,  HARRIET  G.  Born  at  Watertown,  Massa 
chusetts,  October  9,  1830;  studied  in  Rome,  1852-60; 
opened  Boston  studio,  1861 ;  died  at  Cambridge,  Massa 
chusetts,  February  21,  1908. 

WARD,  JOHN  QUINCY  ADAMS.  Born  at  Urbana, 
Ohio,  June  29,  1830;  studied  under  H.  K.  Brown,  1850 
-57;  studio  in  New  York  City  since  1861. 

MEADE,  LARKIN  GOLDSMITH.  Born  at  Chesterfield, 
New  Hampshire,  January  3,  1835;  studied  under 
Brown  and  in  Florence ;  artist  at  the  front  for  Harper's 
Weekly  during  Civil  War ;  afterwards  returned  to  Flor 
ence  and  made  his  home  there. 

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WARNER,  OLIN  LEVI.  Born  at  Suffield,  Connecticut, 
April  9,  1844;  studied  in  Paris,  1869-72;  opened  New 
York  studio,  1873;  died  there,  August  14,  1896. 

SAINT  GAUDENS,  AUGUSTUS.  Born  at  Dublin,  Ire 
land,  March  1,  1848;  came  to  America  in  infancy; 
learned  trade  of  cameo  cutter;  studied  at  Paris,  1867- 
70;  Rome,  1870-72;  opened  New  York  studio,  1872; 
died  at  Corinth,  N.  H.,  August  3,  1907. 

FRENCH,  DANIEL  CHESTER.  Born  at  Exeter,  New 
Hampshire,  April  20,  1850;  studied  in  Boston  and 
Florence;  studio  in  Washington,  1876-78;  in  Boston, 
1878-87;  in  New  York  since  1887. 

MACMONNIES,  FREDERICK.  Born  at  Brooklyn,  New 
York,  September  20,  1863;  studied  under  Saint  Gau- 
dens,  1880-84;  also  at  Paris,  and  has  spent  many  of  the 
succeeding  years  in  France. 

BARNARD,  GEORGE  GRAY.  Born  at  Belief onte,  Penn 
sylvania,  May  24,  1863;  studied  at  Paris,  1884-87; 
spent  some  years  in  New  York,  and  then  returned  to 
France. 


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CHAPTEE   VI 

THE  STAGE 

golden  age  of  American  acting  was  not  so 
very  long  ago.  Most  white-haired  men  remem 
ber  it,  and  love  to  talk  of  the  days  of  Booth  and 
Forrest  and  Charlotte  Cushman.  Joseph  Jefferson, 
the  last  survivor  of  the  old  regime,  died  just  the  other 
day,  and  to  the  very  end  showed  the  present  genera 
tion  the  charm  and  humor  of  Bob  Acres  and  Rip  Van 
Winkle. 

Ko  doubt  that  golden  age  is  made  to  appear  more 
golden  than  it  really  was  by  the  mists  of  time;  but 
undoubtedly  the  old  actors  possessed  a  mellowness,  a 
solidity,  a  sort  of  high  tradition  now  almost  un 
known.  These  qualities  were  due  in  part,  perhaps, 
to  the  long  and  arduous  stock  company  training, 
where,  in  the  old  days,  every  actor  must  serve  his 
apprenticeship,  and  in  part  to  the  study  of  the  classic 
drama  which  had  so  large  a  place  in  stock  company 
repertoire. 

Success  was  infinitely  harder  to  win  than  it  is  to 
day.  There  were  fewer  theatres,  so  that  the  great 
actors  were  forced  to  play  together,  to  their  mutual 
advantage  and  improvement.  The  multiplication  of 
theatres  at  the  present  time,  and  the  vast  increase  of 

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the  theatre-going  public,  has  led  to  the  "  star  "  sys 
tem — to  the  placing  of  an  actor  at  the  head  of  a 
company,  as  soon  as  he  has  won  a  certain  reputation. 
And,  since  care  is  taken  that  the  "  star  "  shall  out 
shine  all  his  associates,  it  follows  that  he  has  no  one 
to  measure  himself  with,  he  is  no  longer  on  his  metal, 
and  his  growth  usually  stops  then  and  there. 

But  let  us  be  frank  about  it.  The  attitude  of  the 
public  toward  the  theatre  has  changed.  To-day  we 
would  not  tolerate  the  heavy  melodramas  which  en 
chained  our  parents  and  grandparents.  The  age  of 
rant  and  fustian  has  passed  away,  and  Edwin  Forrest 
could  never  gain  a  second  fortune  from  such  a  com 
bination  of  these  qualities  as  "  Metamora."  We  are 
more  sophisticated;  we  refuse  to  be  thrilled  by  Iii- 
gomar,  no  matter  how  loudly  he  bellows.  What  we 
ask  for  principally  is  to  be  amused,  and  consequently 
the  great  effort  of  the  theatre  is  to  amuse  us,  for 
the  theatre  must  cater  to  its  public.  So,  if  the  stage 
to-day  is  not  what  it  was  fifty  years  ago,  the  fault  lies 
principally  in  front  of  the  footlights  and  not  behind 
them. 

To  the  student  of  American  acting,  one  name 
stands  out  before  all  the  rest,  the  name  of  Booth. 
No  other  actors  in  this  country  have  ever  equalled 
the  achievements  of  Junius  Brutus  Booth  and  of  his 
son,  Edwin  Booth.  They  possessed  the  genius  of 
tragedy,  if  any  men  ever  did,  and  no  one  who  saw 
them  in  their  great  moments  can  forget  the  impres 
sion  of  absolute  reality  which  they  conveyed. 

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The  Stage 

Junius  Brutus  Booth  was  the  son  of  an  eccentric 
silversmith  of  London,  and  was  born  there  in  1796. 
Let  us  pause  here  to  remark  that,  just  as  the  greatest 
Frenchman  who  ever  lived  was  an  Italian,  and  the 
greatest  Russian  woman  a  German,  so  most  of  the 
early  American  actors  were  either  English  or  Irish. 
This  sounds  rather  Irish  itself;  but  it  is  true.  Cer 
tainly,  in  the  end  ISTapoleon  Bonaparte  became  as 
French  as  any  Frenchman  and  the  Empress  Cather 
ine  II  Russian  to  the  core;  and  the  English  and  Irish 
actors  who  came  to  these  shores  in  search  of  fame  and 
fortune,  and  who  found  them  and  spent  the  re 
mainder  of  their  lives  here,  have  every  right  to  be 
considered  in  any  account  of  the  American  stage 
which  they  did  so  much  to  adorn. 

Junius  Brutus  Booth,  then,  was  born  in  London  in 
1796.  Twenty  years  before,  his  father  had  been  so 
carried  away  by  Republican  principles  that  he  had 
sailed  for  America  to  join  the  ranks  of  the  army  of 
independence,  but  he  was  captured  and  sent  back  to 
England.  So  it  will  be  seen  that  he  was  something 
more  than  a  mere  silversmith;  but  he  was  very  suc 
cessful  at  his  trade,  and  was  able  to  give  his  son  a 
careful  classical  education,  to  fit  him  for  the  bar. 
Imagine  his  chagrin  when  the  boy,  after  a  short 
experience  in  amateur  theatricals,  announced  his  in 
tention  of  becoming  an  actor. 

He  secured  some  small  parts,  made  a  tour  of  the 
provinces,  and  finally,  in  London,  engaged  in  a  re 
markable  war  with  the  great  tragedian,  Edmund 
Kean,  which  divided  the  town  into  two  factions.  But 

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Booth  tired  of  the  struggle,  in  which  the  odds  were 
all  against  him,  and  in  1821  sailed  for  America.  He 
won  an  instant  success,  and  was  a  great  popular  favor 
ite  until  the  day  of  his  death.  He  was  a  short,  spare, 
muscular  man,  with  a  pale  countenance,  set  off  by 
dark  hair  and  lighted  by  a  pair  of  piercing  blue  eyes, 
and  he  possessed  a  voice  of  wonderful  compass  and 
thrilling  power.  Upon  the  stage  he  was  formidable 
and  tremendous,  giving  an  impression  of  overwhelm 
ing  power,  in  which  his  son,  perhaps,  never  quite 
equalled  him. 

Shortly  after  his  arrival  in  America,  Booth  bought 
a  farm  near  Baltimore,  and  there,  on  November  13, 
1833,  Edwin  Booth  was  born.  There  was  a  great 
shower  of  meteors  that  night,  which,  if  they  por 
tended  nothing  else,  may  be  taken  as  symbolical  of 
the  career  of  America's  greatest  tragedian.  He  was 
the  seventh  of  ten  children,  all  of  whom  inherited,  in 
some  degree,  their  father's  genius.  It  was  not  with 
out  a  trace  of  madness,  and  reached  a  fearful  cul 
mination  in  John  Wilkes  Booth,  when  he  shot  down 
Abraham  Lincoln  at  Ford's  Theatre  in  Washington. 

From  the  first,  Edwin  Booth  felt  himself  destined 
for  the  stage.  His  father  did  not  encourage  him,  but 
finally,  in  1849,  consented  to  his  appearance  with 
him  in  the  unimportant  part  of  Tressel,  in  "  King 
Kichard  the  Third."  From  that  time  on,  he  accom 
panied  his  father  in  all  his  wanderings,  and  partook 
of  the  strange  and  sad  adventures  of  that  wayward 
man  of  genius.  In  1852,  he  went  with  his  father  to 
California,  and  was  left  there  by  the  elder  Booth, 

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The  Stage 

who  no  doubt  thought  it  the  best  school  for  the  boy's 
budding  talent.  There,  in  the  Sandwich  Islands,  and 
in  Australia,  among  the  rough  crowds  of  the  mining 
camps,  he  had  four  years  of  the  most  severe  training 
that  hardship,  discipline,  and  stern  reality  can  fur 
nish.  Amid  it  all  his  genius  grew  and  deepened,  and 
when  he  returned  again  to  the  east  in  1856  he  was 
no  longer  a  novice,  but  an  accomplished  actor. 

His  last  years  in  California  had  been  shadowed  by 
a  great  sorrow — the  sudden  and  pitiful  death  of  his 
father.  The  elder  Booth  had  for  years  been  subject 
to  attacks  of  insanity,  brought  on,  or  at  least  intensi 
fied,  by  extreme  intemperance.  On  one  occasion  he 
had  attempted  to  commit  suicide.  On  another,  he 
had  had  his  nose  broken,  an  accident  which  so  inter 
fered  with  his  voice  that  he  did  not  regain  complete 
control  of  it  for  nearly  two  years.  On  his  return 
from  California,  where  he  had  left  his  son,  he  stopped 
at  New  Orleans,  and  remained  there  a  week,  per 
forming  to  crowded  houses.  He  then  started  north 
by  way  of  the  Mississippi,  and  was  found  dying  in  his 
stateroom  a  few  days  later.  He  had  been  caught  in 
a  severe  rain  as  he  left  New  Orleans,  a  cold  de 
veloped,  complications  followed,  and  for  forty-eight 
hours  he  lay  unattended  in  his  stateroom,  without 
that  medical  attention  which  he  was  unable  or  un 
willing  to  summon.  He  died  November  30,  1852, 
and  his  body  was  interred  at  Greenmount  Cemetery, 
Baltimore,  in  a  grave  afterwards  marked  by  a  monu 
ment  erected  by  his  son  Edwin. 

This  was  only  one  of  many  tragedies  which 
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darkened  the  life  of  Edwin  Booth,  for,  to  use  the 
-words  of  William  "Winter,  he  was  "  tried  by  some  of 
the  most  terrible  afflictions  that  ever  tested  the  forti 
tude  of  a  human  soul.  Over  his  youth,  plainly 
visible,  impended  the  lowering  cloud  of  insanity. 
While  he  was  yet  a  boy,  and  while  literally  struggling 
for  life  in  the  semi-barbarous  wilds  of  old  California, 
he  lost  his  beloved  father,  under  circumstances  of 
singular  misery.  In  early  manhood  he  laid  in  her 
grave  the  woman  of  his  first  love,  the  wife  who  had 
died  in  absence  from  him,  herself  scarcely  past  the 
threshold  of  youth,  lovely  as  an  angel  and  to  all  who 
knew  her  precious  beyond  expression.  A  little  later 
his  heart  was  well  nigh  broken  and  his  life  was 
well  nigh  blasted  by  the  crime  of  a  lunatic  brother 
that  for  a  moment  seemed  to  darken  the  hope  of  the 
world.  Recovering  from  that  blow,  he  threw  all  his 
resources  and  powers  into  the  establishment  of  the 
grandest  theatre  in  the  metropolis  of  America,  and 
he  saw  his  fortune  of  more  than  a  million  dollars,  to 
gether  with  the  toil  of  some  of  the  best  years  of  his 
life  frittered  away.  Under  all  trials  he  bore  bravely 
up,  and  kept  the  even,  steadfast  tenor  of  his  course; 
strong,  patient,  gentle,  neither  elated  by  public  hom 
age  nor  embittered  by  private  grief." 

It  has  been  said  that  Booth  returned  from  Cali 
fornia  a  finished  actor.  He  had,  besides,  the  prestige 
of  a  great  name,  and  he  was  welcomed  with  open 
arms.  He  had  not  yet  reached  the  summit  of  his 
skill,  but  he  showed  an  extraordinary  grace  and  "  a 
spirit  ardent  with  the  fire  of  genius."  From  that 

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time  forward,  his  career  was  one  of  lofty  endeavor 
and  of  high  achievement.  In  the  great  characters  of 
Shakespeare,  especially  in  those  of  Hamlet,  Richard 
the  Third,  and  lago,  he  had  no  rivals,  and  no  one 
who  witnessed  him  in  any  of  these  parts  ever  outlived 
the  deep  impression  the  performance  made.  During 
the  last  two  or  three  years  of  his  life  his  health  failed 
gradually,  and  he  was  finally  compelled  to  leave  the 
stage.  On  April  19,  1893,  he  suffered  a  stroke  of 
paralysis  from  which  he  never  rallied,  lingering  in  a 
semi-conscious  state  until  June  7th,  when  he  sank 
rapidly  and  died. 

Of  his  art  no  words  can  give  an  adequate  idea.  It 
was  essentially  poetic,  full  of  a  strange  and  compel 
ling  charm.  His  great  moments  laid  upon  his  audi 
ence  the  spell  of  his  genius,  and  rank  with  the  high 
est  achievements  of  any  actor  who  ever  lived.  His- 
countenance — • 

"That  face  which  no  man  ever  saw 

And  from  his  memory  banished  quite, 
The  eyes  in  which  are  Hamlet's  awe 

And  Cardinal  Richelieu's  subtle  light" — 

as  Thomas  Bailey  Aldrich  wrote  of  Sargent's  por 
trait,  which  heads  this  chapter — was  a  strange  and 
moving  one,  and  in  range  of  expression  unsurpassed. 
His  eyes  were  especially  wonderful,  dark  brown,  but 
seeming  to  turn  black  in  moments  of  passion,  and 
conveying,  with  electrical  effect,  the  actor's  thought. 
He  was  unique.  He  stood  apart.  The  American 
stage  has  never  produced  another  like  him. 

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Second  only  to  Edwin  Booth  in  sheer  glory  of 
achievement  stands  Edwin  Forrest.  He  fell  far  be 
low  Booth  in  grace,  in  charm,  and  in  poetic  insight, 
but  he  surpassed  him  in  physical  equipment  for  the 
great  parts  of  tragedy,  particularly  in  his  voice,  mag 
nificent,  vibrating,  with  an  extraordinary  depth  and 
purity  of  tone. 

Unlike  Booth,  Forrest  came  from  no  family  of 
actors,  nor  inherited  a  name  famous  in  the  annals  of 
the  stage.  He  was  born  in  Philadelphia  in  1806,  his 
father  being  a  Scotchman,  employed  in  Stephen 
Girard's  bank,  and  making  just  enough  money  to 
keep  his  family  of  six  children  from  actual  want. 
He  died  when  Edwin  was  thirteen  years  old,  and  his 
widow,  by  opening  a  little  store,  managed  to  support 
the  children.  She  was  a  serious  and  devout  woman 
and  decided  that  Edwin  should  enter  the  ministry. 
But  meantime,  he  must  earn  a  living,  so  he  was  ap 
prenticed  to  a  cooper. 

How  long  he  stayed  with  the  cooper  nobody  knows ; 
but  it  could  not  have  been  long,  for  already  he  was 
fired  with  an  ambition  to  be  an  actor,  and  after  some 
experience  as  an  amateur,  astonished  and  grieved  his 
mother  by  announcing  that  he  was  going  on  the  stage. 
He  made  his  first  appearance  on  the  27th  of  Novem 
ber,  1820,  as  Young  Norval,  in  Home's  tragedy 
of  "  Douglas,"  and  was  an  immediate  success.  His 
youth — remember,  he  was  but  fourteen — his  hand 
some  face  and  manly  bearing,  and,  above  all,  that 
wonderful  and  resonant  voice,  won  the  audience  at 
Vxnce,  and  his  career  was  begun. 

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But  many  hardships  awaited  him.  The  theatres 
of  New  York  and  Philadelphia  had  their  companies 
of  well-known  and  well-trained  actors.  There  was 
no  hope  for  him  in  either  of  those  cities;  but  at  last 
he  secured  an  engagement  to  play  juvenile  parts  at 
Pittsburgh,  Cincinnati,  Lexington,  and  other  towns 
of  the  middle  west,  at  a  salary  of  eight  dollars  a  week. 
This,  of  course,  was  scarcely  enough  to  keep  body 
and  soul  together,  but  all  Forrest  wanted  was  a 
chance,  and  he  did  not  murmur  at  the  suffering  and 
hardship  which  followed. 

For  business  was  poor,  and  Forrest  did  not  always 
receive  even  that  eight  dollars.  The  end  came  at 
Dayton,  Ohio,  where  the  company  went  to  pieces. 
Forrest,  without  money  and  almost  without  clothes, 
walked  the  forty  miles  to  Cincinnati,  where,  after  a 
time,  he  found  another  position.  Such  was  the  be 
ginning  of  his  career,  and  this  hard  novitiate  lasted 
for  four  years,  until,  in  1826,  at  the  age  of  twenty, 
he  was  able  to  return  to  Xew  York  and  secure  an 
engagement  at  the  old  Bowery  Theatre.  He  was  an 
instant  success,  and  from  year  to  year  his  wonderful 
powers  seemed  to  increase,  until  he  became  easily  the 
most  famous  actor  of  the  day. 

But  his  fame  was  soon  to  be  dulled  by  unfortunate 
personalities.  Conceiving  a  jealousy  of  Macready, 
the  famous  English  actor,  he  hissed  him  at  a  per 
formance  in  Edinburgh,  and  when  Macready  came 
to  America  in  1849,  Forrest's  followers  broke  in 
upon  a  performance  at  the  Astor  Place  opera  house, 
and  a  riot  followed  in  which  twenty-two  men  were 

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killed.     A  quarrel  with  his  wife  led  to  the  divorce 
court,  and  the  suit  was  decided  against  him. 

The  end  was  pathetic.  He  had  been  troubled  with 
gout  for  a  long  time,  and  in  1865,  it  took  a  malig 
nant  turn,  paralyzing  the  sciatic  nerve,  so  that  he  lost 
the  use  of  one  hand,  and  could  not  walk  steadily. 
His  power  had  left  him,  and  in  the  five  years  that 
followed,  he  played  to  empty  houses  and  an  indiffer 
ent  public,  not  content  to  retire,  but  hoping  against 
hope  that  he  might  in  some  way  regain  his  lost  pres 
tige.  A  stroke  of  paralysis  finally  ended  the  hopeless 
struggle. 

Forrest's  art  was  of  a  cruder  and  more  robust  sort 
than  Edwin  Booth's  who,  by  the  way,  was  named 
after  him.  He  was  greatest  in  characters  demanding 
a  great  physique,  a  commanding  presence  and — yes, 
let  us  say  it! — a  loud  voice.  Coriolanus,  Spartacus, 
Yirginius — those  were  his  roles,  and  no  man  ever 
looked  more  imposing  in  a  Roman  toga. 

Forrest,  during  his  English  engagement  of  1845, 
and  on  other  occasions,  shared  the  honors  with  a  re 
markable  actress,  Charlotte  Cushman.  And  perhaps 
none  ever  had  a  more  astonishing  career.  Born  in 
Boston  in  1816,  her  youth  was  one  of  poverty,  for  her 
father  died  while  she  was  very  young,  leaving  no 
property.  The  girl  was  remarkably  bright,  and  soon 
developed  a  contralto  voice  of  unusual  richness  and 
compass.  She  sang  in  a  choir  and  assisted  to  support 
the  family  from  the  age  of  twelve,  securing  such 
musical  instruction  as  she  could.  In  1834,  she  made 
her  first  appearance  in  opera  and  scored  a  trenien- 

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dons  success.  A  splendid  career  seemed  opening  be 
fore  her,  when  suddenly,  a  few  months  later,  her 
voice,  strained  by  the  soprano  parts  which  had  been 
assigned  her,  failed  completely. 

Her  friends  advised  her  to  become  an  actress,  and 
she  went  diligently  to  work,  not  allowing  herself  to 
despond  over  that  first  great  disappointment.  For 
the  next  seven  years,  she  worked  faithfully  learning 
the  new  profession  from  the  very  bottom.  "  I  became 
aware,"  she  said,  "that  one  could  never  sail  a  ship 
by  entering  at  the  cabin  windows;  he  must  serve  and 
learn  his  trade  before  the  mast."  In  that  way  she 
learned  hers,  playing  minor  parts,  doing  cheerfully 
the  drudgery  of  her  profession,  refusing  all  offers  for 
more  important  work  until  she  felt  herself  thoroughly 
capable  of  undertaking  it.  One  would  wish  that  her 
example  might  be  taken  to  heart  by  her  sisters  of  the 
present  day. 

At  last  her  chance  came.  In  1842,  William  C. 
Macready,  the  great  English  tragedian,  visited  the- 
United  States,  and  in  Charlotte  Cushman  he  found  a 
splendid  support.  Indeed,  she  divided  the  honors 
with  him.  A  year  later,  she  went  to  London  and  won 
immense  applause.  "  Since  the  first  appearance  of 
Edmund  Keane,  in  1814,"  said  a  London  journal,  in 
speaking  of  her  first  night  as  "  Bianca,"  "  never  has 
there  been  such  a  debut  on  the  stage  of  an  English 
theatre."  For  eighty-four  nights  she  appeared  with 
Edwin  Forrest.  "All  my  successes  put  together," 
she  wrote  to  her  mother,  "  would  not  come  near  my 
success  in  London." 

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In  the  winter  of  1845  she  tried  one  of  the  most 
daring  experiments  ever  made  by  an  actress,  appear 
ing  as  Eomeo  to  her  sister,  Susan  Cushman's,  Juliet. 
It  was  a  notable  success.  Her  deep  contralto  voice 
made  it  possible  for  her  to  give  a  complete  illusion 
of  the  young  and  handsome  lover.  She  played  other 
male  characters  in  after  years,  notably  Hamlet,  and 
created  a  deep  impression  in  them.  Her  sister  was 
a  lovely  girl,  and  an  accomplished  actress,  and  their 
"  Eomeo  and  Juliet  "  ran  for  two  hundred  nights. 
Susan  Cushman  would  no  doubt  also  have  won  high 
fame  as  an  actress,  but  she  soon  retired  from  the 
stage,  marrying  the  distinguished  chemist  and  author, 
James  Sheridan  Muspratt,  of  Liverpool. 

Charlotte  Cushman  returned  to  America  in  the  fall 
of  1849,  and  was  received  with  acclamation.  There 
was  never  any  question,  after  that,  of  her  position 
as  the  greatest  English-speaking  actress,  and  that  po 
sition  she  easily  maintained  until  her  death.  She 
gathered  wealth  as  well  as  fame,  built  a  villa  at 
Newport,  and  in  1863  earned  nearly  nine  thousand 
dollars  for  the  United  States  Sanitary  Commission 
by  benefit  performances.  Energetic,  resolute,  faith 
ful,  impatient  of  any  achievement  but  the  highest, 
she  seemed  the  very  embodiment  of  many  of  Shake 
speare's  greatest  creations.  She  possessed  a  strange 
and  weird  genius,  akin,  in  some  respects,  to  that  of 
Edwin  Booth,  and  her  delineation  of  the  sublime,  the 
beautiful,  the  terrible  has  never  been  surpassed.  A 
noble  interpreter  of  noble  minds,  Charlotte  Cushman 
stands  for  the  supreme  achievement  of  the  actress. 

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What  Booth  and  Forrest  were  to  tragedy,  William 
J.  Florence  was  to  comedy.  Indeed,  he  may  be  said 
to  have  gone  farther  than  either  Booth  or  Forrest, 
for  he  founded  a  school  and  gave  to  the  stage  the 
chivalrous,  light-hearted  and  lucky  Irishman,  who  has 
since  become  so  familiar  to  the  drama,  however  rare 
he  may  be  outside  the  theatre. 

Florence  was  born  in  Albany,  "New  York,  in  1831. 
His  family  name  was  Conlin,  from  which  it  will  be 
seen  that  he  came  naturally  by  his  insight  into  Irish 
character ;  but  he  changed  this  name  when  he  went 
upon  the  stage  to  the  more  romantic  and  euphonious 
one  of  Florence.  He  gave  evidence  of  possessing 
unusual  dramatic  talent  while  still  a  boy,  and  made 
his  debut  on  the  regular  stage  at  the  age  of  eighteen. 
He  had  the  usual  hardships  of  the  young  actor,  play 
ing  in  various  stock  companies  without  attracting 
especial  attention,  and  finally,  in  1853,  marrying 
Malvina  Pray,  herself  an  actress  of  considerable  abil 
ity. 

It  was  at  this  time  that  Florence  began  to  find  his 
field  in  the  delineation  of  Irish  and  Yankee  charac 
ters,  his  wife  appearing  with  him,  and  together  they 
won  a  wide  popularity.  Florence  wrote  some  plays 
and  a  number  of  sprightly  songs,  which  his  wife  sang 
inimitably.  He  himself  improved  steadily  in  his  act 
ing,  and,  especially  in  the  gentle  humor  and  melting 
pathos  with  which  he  clothed  his  characters,  stood 
quite  alone.  A  tour  through  England  added  to  his 
fame,  and  his  songs  were  soon  being  sung  and 
whistled  in  the  streets  pretty  generally  wherever  the 

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English  tongue  was  spoken.  One  song  in  par 
ticular,  called  "  Bobbing  Around,"  had  immense 
popularity. 

But  Florence  was  more  than  a  mere  song-writer 
Irish  comedian.  In  his  later  years  he  proved  himself 
to  be  an  actor  of  high  attainments  and  no  one  who 
ever  witnessed  a  performance  of  "  The  Rivals,"  with 
Jefferson  as  Bob  Acres,  and  Florence  as  Sir  Lucius 
O'  Trigger,  will  ever  forget  his  finished  and  glowing 
impersonation. 

When  Edwin  Forrest,  heart-broken  and  dis 
credited,  died  in  1872,  he  left  his  manuscript  plays 
to  another  great  tragedian,  whom  he  regarded  as  his 
legitimate  successor,  John  McCullough.  In  some 
respects  McCullough  was  a  greater  actor  than  For 
rest,  for  he  possessed  that  quality  of  poetic  insight 
and  high  imagination  which  Forrest  lacked,  while  in 
physical  equipment  for  the  great  characters  of 
tragedy  he  was  in  no  whit  his  inferior. 

John  McCullough  was  born  in  Coleraine,  Ireland, 
in  1837,  his  parents,  who  were  small  farmers,  bring 
ing  him  to  this  country  at  the  age  of  sixteen.  They 
settled  at  Philadelphia  and  the  boy  was  apprenticed 
to  a  chair-maker,  but  he  soon  broke  away  from  that 
hum-drum  employment,  and  in  1855,  appeared  in  a 
minor  part  in  "  The  Belle's  Strategem."  His  story, 
after  that,  was  the  usual  one  of  long  years  of  training 
in  various  stock  companies.  He  gradually  worked  his 
way  into  prominence,  and  finally  in  1866,  became 
associated  with  Edwin  Forrest,  taking  the  second 
parts  in  the  latter's  plays ;  and,  after  Forrest's  death, 
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taking  his  place  as  the  first  impersonator  of  robust 
tragedy  in  America. 

For  ten  years  his  success  was  tremendous — then 
came  the  sad  ending.  McCullough  had  always  been 
supremely  great  in  characters  requiring  the  delinea 
tion  of  madness — Virginius,  King  Lear,  Othello. 
Whether  this  had  anything  to  do  with  the  final 
tragedy  cannot  be  said,  but  in  1884,  while  playing  at 
Chicago,  he  broke  down  in  the  midst  of  a  perform 
ance,  and  had  to  be  led  from  the  stage.  His  mind 
was  gone;  he  never  rallied,  and  ended  his  days  in  an 
asylum  for  the  insane. 

One  of  the  most  successful  engagements  McCul 
lough  ever  had  was  in  1869  and  for  some  years  there 
after,  when,  with  Lawrence  Barrett,  he  appeared  at 
the  Bush  Street  theatre  in  San  Francisco.  Barrett's 
name  is  also  closely  associated  with  that  of  Edwin 
Booth,  for  he  played  opposite  Booth  through  many 
seasons — Othello  to  Booth's  lago,  Cassius  to  Booth's 
Brutus,  and  so  on ;  and  the  two  formed  a  combination 
which  for  sheer  genius  has  never  been  surpassed. 
But  Barrett  never  commanded  the  adoration  of  the 
public  as  Booth  did,  because  he  lacked  that  power  of 
enchantment  which  Booth  possessed  in  a  supreme 
degree.  His  mind  was  austere,  he  could  win  respect 
but  not  affection,  and,  as  a  result,  criticism  was  more 
captious,  honors  came  grudgingly  or  not  at  all,  and 
the  fight  for  recognition  was  up-hill  all  the  way. 

Lawrence  Barrett  was  bom  in  1838,  and  he  began 
his  theatrical  career  at  the  age  of  fifteen.  After  the 
usual  hard  stock-company  experience,  he  secured  a 

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"New  York  engagement,  where,  for  nearly  two  years, 
he  supported  such  actors  as  Charlotte  Cushman  and 
Edwin  Booth.  From  Kew  York  he  went  to  Boston 
for  a  similar  engagement,  but  at  the  outbreak  of  the 
Civil  War  he  left  the  stage,  accepted  a  captaincy 
in  the  Twenty-eighth  Massachusetts  Infantry,  and 
served  through  the  war  with  distinction.  Then  he 
returned  to  the  theatre,  gaining  an  ever-increasing 
reputation  until  his  death. 

Clara  Morris  called  him  "  The  Man  with  the 
Hungry  Eyes,"  and  they  were  hungry,  for  life  was 
always  a  battle  to  him.  From  an  obscure  and  humble 
position,  without  fortune,  friends,  or  favoring  cir 
cumstances  he  had  fought  his  way  upward  in  the  face 
of  indifference,  disparagement  and  cold  dislike. 

Clara  Morris  has  told  the  story  of  her  own  life 
better  than  anyone  else  could  tell  it,  and  has  shown 
in  doing  it  the  very  qualities  which  made  most  for 
her  success — a  wide  sympathy,  an  impetuous  heart, 
and  an  invincible  optimism.  She,  too,  had  a  hard 
struggle  at  the  first — entering  the  ballet  at  the  age 
of  fifteen  to  help  her  mother  after  her  father's  death, 
and  working  her  way  up  until  she  secured  a  Xew 
York  engagement  with  Augustin  Daly's  famous  stock 
company,  where  she  soon  was  sharing  the  honors 
with  Ada  Eehan.  Ill  health  shortened  her  acting 
career,  and  compelled  her  retirement  from  the  stage 
when  at  the  very  height  of  her  powers. 

Just  the  other  day  there  died  in  California  another 
woman  who  won  a  great  public  a  generation  ago  by 
a  genius  and  charm  seldom  equalled.  Helena  Mod- 

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jeska's  story  "was  an  unusual  one.  Born  in  Cracow, 
Poland,  in  1844,  the  daughter  of  a  great  musician, 
her  early  years  were  passed  in  an  inspiring  atmos 
phere,  and  almost  from  the  first  she  felt  an  impulse 
toward  the  stage.  But  her  family  refused  to  permit 
her  to  become  an  actress,  and  it  was  not  until  after 
her  marriage  that  her  chance  came.  Her  husband 
consented  to  a  few  trial  appearances,  and  her  success 
was  so  great  that  she  was  soon  engaged  as  leading 
lady  for  the  theatre  at  Cracow. 

But  her  husband  incurred  the  ill-will  of  the 
authorities  by  his  political  writings,  and  she  herself 
got  into  trouble  with  them  by  resisting  the  Russian 
censorship  of  the  Polish  theatre.  It  was  evident  that 
arrest  and  banishment  for  either  or  both  of  them 
might  come  at  any  moment,  and  under  this  incessant 
and  increasing  worry,  her  health  began  to  fail.  So 
she  renounced  the  theatre,  as  she  thought,  forever, 
came  to  America,  purchased  a  ranch  in  California, 
and  settled  down  to  spend  the  remainder  of  her  life 
in  quiet.  But  Edwin  Booth,  John  McCullough,  and 
others,  encouraged  her  to  study  English  and  appear 
upon  the  American  stage.  She  did  so,  and  four 
months  later  appeared  at  San  Francisco  as  Adrienne 
Lecouvreur.  She  had  an  instant  success,  and  for 
more  than  thirty  years  maintained  her  position  as 
one  of  the  greatest  actresses  of  the  day. 

Her  personal  fascination  was  of  an  exceedingly  rare 
kind,  her  figure  tall  and  graceful,  her  face  wonder 
fully  attractive  in  its  intellectual  charm  and  eloquent 
mobility.  Shakespeare  was  her  chief  delight,  and  as 

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Juliet,  Rosalind  and  Ophelia  she  enchanted  thou 
sands. 

On  the  evening  of  Thursday,  November  25,  1875? 
an  audience  assembled  at  one  of  the  theatres  of  Louis 
ville,  Kentucky,  to  witness  "  the  first  appearance 
upon  any  stage  "  of  "  a  young  lady  of  Louisville." 
The  young  lady  in  question  had  chosen  as  her  vehicle 
Shakespeare's  Juliet,  which  was  certainly  beginning 
at  the  top;  she  was  only  sixteen  years  of  age  and  had 
never  received  any  practical  stage  training;  her  ex 
perience  of  life  was  narrow  and  provincial — and  yet, 
when  the  curtain  rang  down  for  the  last  time,  the 
discerning  ones  in  that  audience  knew  that,  despite 
the  crudity  of  the  performance,  a  new  star  had  arisen 
and  a  great  career  begun.  For  that  "  young  lady 
of  Louisville  "  was  Mary  Anderson.  Her  story  is 
unique  in  the  history  of  the  American  stage. 

Born  in  California  in  1859,  but  taken  to  Louisville 
a  year  later;  her  father,  Charles  Joseph  Anderson, 
dying  in  1863,  an  officer  in  the  Confederate  army, 
Mary  Anderson  was  reared  by  her  mother  in  the 
Roman  Catholic  faith  and  received  her  education  in 
a  parochial  school  at  Louisville.  She  left  school 
before  she  was  fourteen,  and  two  years  later,  as  we 
have  seen,  was  upon  the  stage.  Her  first  appearance 
won  her  an  engagement  at  Louisville,  and  for  thirteen 
years  thereafter  she  was  an  actress,  never  in  a  stock 
company,  but  always  a  star.  Then,  at  the  very 
meridian  of  her  career,  she  married  and  retired  for 
ever  from  the  stage. 

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Mary  Anderson's  charm  was  not  that  of  a  great 
actress,  for  a  great  actress  she  never  became.  She 
had  not  the  training  necessary  to  finished  and  round 
ed  work.  Her  charm  was  rather  that  of  a  sweet  and 
gracious  personality,  of  a  beautiful  nature  and  a 
high  sincerity.  Sumptuously  beautiful,  and  possessed 
of  a  clear  and  resonant  voice,  such  statuesque  char 
acters  as  Galatea  and  Ilermione  attracted  her 
irresistibly,  and  in  these  she  achieved  her  greatest 
triumphs. 

Scarcely  second  to  her  was  Ada  Rehan,  born  a  year 
later,  appearing  on  the  stage  two  years  earlier,  in 
other  words,  at  the  age  of  thirteen.  Ada  Rehan, 
appropriately  enough,  was  born  at  Limerick,  Ireland, 
and  the  roguish  and  perverse  Irish  spirit  was  ever 
uppermost  in  her  acting.  She  was  brought  to 
America  when  she  was  five  years  old,  and  lived  and 
went  to  school  in  Brooklyn.  Two  of  her  elder  sisters 
were  upon  the  stage,  but  she  does  not  seem  to  have 
indicated  any  especial  desire  to  imitate  them,  and 
her  first  appearance  was  by  accident.  An  actress 
playing  a  small  part  in  "  Across  the  Continent  "  was 
taken  suddenly  ill,  and  the  child,  who  happened  to 
be  at  the  theatre,  was  hastily  dressed  for  it  and 
taught  her  few  lines;  but  she  displayed  so  much 
readiness  and  natural  talent  that,  at  a  family  council 
which  followed  the  performance,  it  was  decided  that 
she  should  proceed  with  a  stage  career,  and  she  was 
soon  regularly  embarked. 

This  meant  a  long  and  severe  course  of  training 
in  the  stock  companies  maintained  at  the  various 

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theatres  throughout  the  country  to  support  such 
wandering  stars  as  Booth  and  McCullough,  and  Bar 
rett,  and  Adelaide  Neilson,  and  she  emerged  from 
this  training  well  grounded  in  all  the  business  of  the 
actress.  In  1879,  she  attracted  Augustin  Daly's 
attention,  and  from  that  time  forward  until  Daly's 
death,  she  was  the  leading  woman  at  his  famous  New 
York  house,  becoming  one  of  the  most  admired 
figures  upon  the  stage.  Her  art,  luminous  and  spar 
kling,  especially  fitted  her  for  high  comedy,  and  it 
was  there  that  she  achieved  her  greatest  distinction. 

Ada  Rehan's  name  was  closely  associated  for  many 
years  with  that  of  John  Drew,  also  a  member  of  the 
Daly  company,  and  a  son  of  the  famous  "  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  John  Drew,"  two  of  the  most  versatile,  charm 
ing  and  popular  members  of  the  old  school.  The 
elder  John  Drew  was  born  in  Ireland  in  1825,  but 
came  to  America  at  the  age  of  twenty  and  jpent  the 
remainder  of  his  life  here,  except  for  a  few  absences 
on  tour.  He  was  considered  the  best  Irish  comedian 
on  the  American  stage.  His  wife,  born  in  London  in 
1820  of  a  theatrical  family,  appeared  in  child's  parts 
at  the  age  of  eight,  came  to  this  country  at  the  age 
of  twenty,  and  made  a  great  success  here  in  high 
comedy  parts.  Their  son  can  scarcely  be  said  to  have 
fulfilled  the  promise  of  his  early  years,  but  seems  to 
be  content  with  an  achievement  which  shows  him 
to  be  an  accomplished  and  finished,  but  by  no  means 
inspired  or  imaginative,  actor. 

Another  family  as  celebrated  in  American  theatri 
cal  annals  as  that  of  John  Drew  was  E.  L.  Daven- 

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port's.  Davenport  himself  had  received  his  training 
in  the  old  stock  companies,  and  notably  as  Junius 
Brutus  Booth's  support  in  a  number  of  plays.  He 
was  equally  at  home  in  tragedy  and  comedy.  As 
sociated  with  him  after  their  marriage  in  1849  was 
his  wife,  Fanny  Elizabeth  Vining,  an  actress  of  con 
siderable  ability. 

~No  less  than  six  of  their  children  followed  the 
stage  as  a  career.  The  most  famous  of  them  was 
Fanny  Davenport,  whose  stage  career  began  when 
she  was  a  mere  baby.  Her  young  girlhood  was 
occupied  with  soubrette  parts,  but  she  soon  developed 
unusual  emotional  powers,  and  attracted  Augustin 
Daly's  notice.  He  added  her  to  his  stock  company 
in  1869,  and  she  soon  won  a  notable  success  in  such 
parts  as  Lady  Gay  Spanker,  Lady  Teazle  and  Kosa- 
lind. 

Perhaps  no  American  actor  ever  had  a  more  re 
markable  career  than  William  Warren.  Born  in 
1812,  the  son  of  a  player  of  considerable  reputation, 
his  first  appearance  was  at  the  age  of  twenty.  For 
twelve  years  his  history  was  that  of  most  other  strug 
gling  actors,  but  in  1846  he  became  connected  with 
the  Howard  Athenseum  at  Boston,  where  he  re 
mained  for  thirty-five  years,  retiring  permanently 
from  the  stage  in  1882. 

During  his  career,  he  had  given  13,345  perform 
ances  and  had  appeared  in  577  characters,  a  record 
which  has  probably  never  been  approached.  He  was 
especially  notable  in  his  representations  of  the  "  fine 
old  English  gentleman,"  and  he  became  to  Boston  a 

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sort  of  Conservatory  of  Acting  in  himself.  That  he 
was  appreciated  both  as  man  and  artist  his  long  resi 
dence  in  Boston  proves. 

He  was  a  cousin  of  one  of  the  best  loved  actors 
who  ever  trod  the  American  stage — Joseph  Jefferson; 
but  their  careers  were  very  different,  for  Jefferson, 
in  the  last  quarter  century  of  his  life  confined  him 
self  to  a  few  parts — practically  to  four,  Bob  Acres, 
Rip  Van  Winkle,  Dr.  Pangloss  and  Cabel  Plummer. 
In  these  he  was  inimitable.  Something  is  gained  and 
lost,  of  course,  by  either  of  these  methods ;  one  is  in 
clined  to  think  the  wiser  plan,  that  making  for  the 
greatest  achievement,  is  a  wide  diversity  of  parts, 
and  constant  creation  of  new  ones.  And  yet,  when 
one  looks  back  upon  Jefferson's  delicate  and  cameo- 
clear  impersonations,  one  would  not  have  him  dif 
ferent. 

Joseph  Jefferson  was  the  third  of  his  name  to 
challenge  American  theatre-goers.  His  grandfather, 
born  in  England,  in  1774,  came  to  America  twenty- 
three  years  later  and  spent  the  remainder  of  his  life 
liere,  gaining  some  reputation  as  a  comedian.  His 
father  is  said  to  have  had  little  ability,  and  to  have 
been  careless  and  improvident.  The  third  of  the 
name  was  born  in  Philadelphia  in  1829,  and  began 
Ms  stage  career  at  the  age  of  three,  appearing  as  the 
child  in  "  Pizarro,"  which  must  have  frightened  him 
nearly  to  death. 

His  father  died  when  he  was  only  fourteen,  and 
the  lad  joined  a  company  of  strolling  players,  who 
made  their  way  through  Texas,  and  during  the  war 

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with  Mexico,  followed  the  American  army  into  Mexi 
can  territory.  American  drama  was  in  no  great 
demand,  so  at  Matamoras  Jefferson  opened  a  stall  for 
the  sale  of  coffee  and  other  refreshments,  making 
enough  money  to  get  back  to  the  United  States. 

For  the  next  ten  years  he  appeared  in  stock  com 
panies  in  the  larger  eastern  cities,  meeting  such 
players  as  Edwin  Forrest,  James  E.  Murdoch,  and 
Edwin  Adams;  but  the  one  who  influenced  him  most 
was  his  own  half-brother,  Charles  Burke,  an  unusual 
ly  accomplished  serio-comic.  William  Warren  also 
ranked  high  in  his  affections. 

The  turning  point  of  his  career  came  in  1857  when, 
he  became  associated  with  Laura  Keene  at  her  theatre 
in  Xew  York.  Here  his  first  part  was  one  with 
which  he  was  afterwards  so  closely  identified,  that 
of  Dr.  Pangloss,  and  then  came  "  Our  American 
Cousin/7  in  which  he  gained  a  notable  success  as  Asa 
Trenchard,  and  in  which  Edward  A.  Sothern  laid  the 
foundation  of  the  fantastic  character  of  Lord  Dun 
dreary,  which  was  to  make  him  famous.  A  year  later, 
lie  created  another  of  his  great  characters,  Caleb 
Plummer,  in  "  The  Cricket  on  the  Hearth,"  and  soon 
afterwards,  the  most  famous  of  all,  Kip  Van  Winkle, 
which  remained  to  the  end  his  supreme  impersona 
tion. 

After  that  time,  his  career  was  a  golden  and  happy 
one.  He  won  the  affection  of  the  American  public- 
as  perhaps  no  recent  player  has  ever  done.  His  art 
had  a  peculiarly  wide  appeal  because  it  was  fine  and 
sweet;  he  won  sympathy  and  inspired  affection;  and 

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seemed  the  very  embodiment  of  the  tender,  artless 
and  lovable  characters  it  was  his  joy  to  represent. 

Jefferson's  death  marked  the  passing  of  the  last  of 
the  "  old  school  "—that  mellow,  fluent,  and  accom 
plished  circle  of  players  who  seem  so  different  to  their 
successors.  But  public  taste  is  different  too.  We 
care  no  longer  for  the  rantings  and  heroics  of  Vir- 
ginius  and  Spartacus  and  all  the  rest  of  those  toga- 
clothed  gentlemen  who  differed  from  each  other  only 
in  their  names.  We  demand  something  more  subtle, 
more — yes,  let  us  say  it ! — intellectual.  The  modern 
who  came  nearest  to  answering  this  demand,  to  show 
ing  us  the  complex  thing  which  we  know  human 
nature  to  be,  was  Richard  Mansfield.  A  great  artist, 
whom  no  difficulty  appalled,  he  gave  the  American 
public,  season  after  season,  the  most  significant 
procession  of  worthy  dramas  that  one  man  ever  pro 
duced. 

Mansfield  was  born  in  Heligoland  in  1857,  and 
studied  for  the  East  Indian  civil  service,  but  came  to 
Boston  and  opened  a  studio,  studied  art,  and  then 
suddenly  abandoned  it  for  the  stage.  Curiously 
enough,  he  began  with  small  parts  in  comic  opera, 
and  a  few  years  later,  made  one  of  the  funniest 
Kokos  who  ever  appeared  in  "  The  Mikado."  But 
he  soon  changed  to  straight  drama,  and  the  first  great 
success  of  his  career  was  as  Baron  Chevrial  in  "  A 
Parisian  Romance,"  a  part  which  was  given  him  after 
other  actors  had  refused  to  take  it,  and  in  which  he 
created  a  real  sensation.  His  reputation  was  secure 
after  that,  and  grew  steadily  until  the  swift  and  com- 

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plete  collapse  from  over-work,  winch  ended  his  life 
at  the  age  of  fifty-one. 

Are  there  any  great  players  alive  in  America  to 
day?  E.  H.  Sothern,  perhaps,  comes  nearest  to 
greatness,  and  has  at  least  won  respectful  attention 
by  a  sincerity  and  earnestness  which  have  accom 
plished  much.  He  is  the  son  of  Edward  Askew  Soth- 
ern,  whose  career  was  a  most  peculiar  one.  Intended 
for  the  ministry,  he  chose  the  stage  instead,  appar 
ently  with  no  talent  for  it,  and  for  six  or  seven  years, 
only  the  most  unimportant  of  minor  parts  were  en 
trusted  to  him. 

One  of  these  was  that  of  Lord  Dundreary  in  "  Our 
American  Cousin."  It  consisted  of  only  a  few  lines 
and  Sothern  accepted  it  under  protest,  but  he  made 
such  a  hit  in  it  that  it  was  amplified  and  became  the 
principal  part  of  the  play.  In  fact,  the  play  became, 
in  the  end,  a  series  of  monologues  for  Dundreary.  It 
had  some  remarkable  runs,  one,  for  instance,  in 
London,  for  four  hundred  and  ninety-six  consecutive 
nights.  Sothern  continued  playing  the  part  until  his 
death.  His  son  is  undoubtedly  a  far  greater  actor, 
and  may  achieve  a  high  and  lasting  fame. 

Associated  with  him  in  many  of  his  later  and  more 
ambitious  productions  has  been  Julia  Marlowe,  un 
doubtedly  the  most  finished  and  accomplished  actress 
in  America.  She  had  a  thorough  training,  having 
been  on  the  stage  since  her  twelfth  year,  and  devot 
ing  herself  closely  to  the  study  of  her  art.  Her  sin 
cerity,  too,  promises  much  for  the  future.  After 
Sothern,  Otis  Skinner  is  perhaps  the  most  note- 

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^worthy,   and   after  him,   well,    anyone  of  a   dozen, 
whom  it  is  needless  to  name  here. 

It  was  Joseph  Jefferson  who  remarked  that  "  all 
the  good  actors  are  dead.'7  He  meant,  of  course, 
that  the  present  seems  always  of  little  worth  when 
compared  with  the  past;  and  this  is  the  case  not  only 
with  the  theatre,  but  in  some  degree  with  all  the  arts. 
It  is  especially  true  of  the  theatre,  however,  because 
the  player  lives  only  in  the  memories  of  those  who 
saw  him,  and  memory  sees  things,  as  it  were,  through 
a  golden  glow. 

SUMMARY 

BOOTH,  JUNIUS  BRUTUS.  Born  at  London,  May  1, 
1796;  first  appearance,  i813;  came  to  America,  1821; 
•died  on  a  Mississippi  steamboat,  November  30,  1852. 

BOOTH,  EDWIN.  Born  at  Bel  Air,  Maryland,  No 
vember  13,  1833;  first  appearance,  1849;  first  appear- 
.ance  as  "  star,"  as  Sir  Giles  Overreach,  1857 ;  played 
under  management  of  Lawrence  Barrett,  1886-91,  in 
"Hamlet";  founded  "The  Players'  Club,"  1888;  died 
at  its  club-house,  in  New  York  City,  June  7,  1893. 

FORREST,  EDWIN.  Born  at  Philadelphia,  March  9, 
1806;  first  appearance,  1820;  first  notable  success  as 
Othello,  1826;  last  appearance  in  March,  1871;  died  at 
Philadelphia,  December  12,  1872. 

CUSHMAN,  CHARLOTTE.  Born  at  Boston,  July  23, 
1816;  first  appearance,  1835;  played  with  Macready, 
1842-44;  in  London,  1844-48;  died  at  Boston,  Febru 
ary  8,  1876. 

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FLORENCE,  WILLIAM  JAMES.  Born  at  Albany,  New 
York,  July  26,  1831;  first  appearance,  1849;  died  at 
Philadelphia,  November  19,  1891. 

McCuLLOUGH,  JOHN.  Born  at  Coleraine,  Ireland, 
November  2,  1837;  came  to  America,  1853;  first  ap 
pearance,  1855;  broke  down  mentally  and  physically, 
1884;  died  in  insane  asylum  at  Philadelphia,  Novem 
ber  8,  1885. 

BARRETT,  LAWRENCE.  Born  at  Paterson,  New  Jer 
sey,  April  4,  1838;  first  appearance,  1853;  enlisted  in 
28th  Massachusetts  Volunteers,  1861;  from  1887  until 
his  death  closely  associated  with  Edwin  Booth;  died  at 
New  York  City,  March  21,  1891. 

MORRIS,  CLARA.  Born  at  Toronto,  Canada,  1849; 
first  appearance,  1861;  leading  lady,  1869;  joined 
Daly's  company,  1870;  married  Frederick  C.  Harriott, 
1874. 

MODJESKA,  HELENA.  Born  at  Cracow,  Poland,  Oc 
tober  12,  1844;  first  appearance,  1861;  first  appearance 
in  English  at  San  Francisco,  1877;  died  in  California, 
April  8,  1909. 

ANDERSON,  MARY.  Born  at  Sacramento,  California, 
July  28,  1859;  first  appearance,  1875;  married  An 
tonio  de  Navarro,  1889,  and  retired  from  the  stage. 

EEHAN,  ADA.  Born  at  Limerick,  Ireland,  April  22, 
1860;  came  to  America  in  childhood;  first  appearance, 
1874 ;  joined  Daly's  company,  1879 ;  leading  lady  there 
until  his  death  in  1899. 

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DREW,  JOHN.  Born  at  Philadelphia,  in  1853 ;  first 
appearance,  1873;  leading  man  in  Daly's  company, 
1879-99. 

DREW,  JOHN,  SR.  Born  at  Dublin,  Ireland,  Sep 
tember  3,  1825;  first  appearance  in  New  York,  1845; 
died  at  Philadelphia,  May  21,  1862. 

DREW,  MRS.  JOHN,  SR.  (LOUISA  LANE).  Born  at 
London,  January  10.,  1820 ;  first  appearance  when  mere 
child;  came  to  America,  1828;  married  John  Drew, 
1850;  died  at  Larchmont,  New  York,  August  31,  1897. 

DAVENPORT,  EDWARD  LOOMIS.  Born  at  Boston, 
Massachusetts,  November  15,  1814;  first  appearance, 
1836;  played  in  England,  1847-54;  died  at  Canton, 
Pennsylvania,  September  1,  1877. 

DAVENPORT,  FANNY  ELIZABETH  VINING.  Born  at 
London,  July  6,  1829 ;  began  playing  baby  parts  at  age 
of  three;  made  first  appearance,  1847,  as  Juliet;  mar 
ried  E.  L.  Davenport,  January  8,  1849;  first  appear 
ance  in  New  York,  1854. 

DAVENPORT,  FANNY  LILY  GIPSY.  Born  in  London, 
April  10,  1850;  first  American  appearance,  1862;  died 
at  Danbury,  Massachusetts,  September  26,  1898. 

WARREN,  WILLIAM.  Born  at  Philadelphia,  Novem 
ber  17,  1812;  first  appearance,  1832;  died  at  Boston, 
September  21,  1888. 

JEFFERSON,  JOSEPH.  Born  at  Philadelphia,  Febru 
ary  20,  1829;  first  appearance  on  stage  as  child;  first 
became  prominent  as  Asa  Trenchard,  in  "  Our  Ameri 
can  Cousin,"  1858;  died  at  West  Palm  Beach,  Florida, 
April  23,  1905. 

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SOTHERN,  EDWARD  ASKEW.  Born  at  Liverpool.,  Eng 
land,  April  1,  1826 ;  first  appearance,  1849 ;  first  Amer 
ican  appearance,  1852;  made  his  mark  as  Lord  Dun 
dreary,  1858;  died  at  London,  January  20,  1881. 

SOTHERN,  EDWARD  H.  Born  in  London ;  appeared  as 
child;  first  took  leading  part,  1887. 


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CHAPTER    VII 
SCIENTISTS  AND  EDUCATORS 

TO  give  even  tlie  briefest  account,  within  the 
limits  of  a  single  chapter,  of  the  lives  of  note 
worthy  American  scientists  and  educators  is,  of 
course,  quite  beyond  the  bounds  of  possibility.  All 
that  can  be  done,  even  at  best,  is  to  mention  a  few  of 
the  greatest  names  and  to  indicate  in  outline  the  par 
ticular  achievements  with  which  they  are  associated. 
That  is  all  that  has  been  attempted  here.  There  are 
at  least  a  hundred  men,  in  addition  to  those  men 
tioned  in  this  chapter,  whose  work  is  of  consequence 
in  the  development  of  American  science  and  educa 
tion.  The  record  of  their  achievements  is  an  inspir 
ing  one  which,  if  properly  told,  would  occupy  many 
volumes. 

In  the  annals  of  American  science,  two  names 
stand  out  with  peculiar  lustre — John  James  Audu- 
bon  and  Louis  Agassiz.  Neither  was,  strictly  speak 
ing,  American,  for  Agassiz  was  born  in  Switzerland 
and  did  not  come  to  this  country  until  he  was  nearly 
forty  years  of  age;  while  Audubon  was  born  in 
French  territory,  the  son  of  a  French  naval  officer, 
and  was  educated  in  France.  But  the  work  of  both 
men  was  distinctively  American,  for  Audubon  de- 

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Voted  his  life  to  the  study  of  American  birds,  and 
Agassiz  the  latter  part  of  his  to  the  study  and  classi 
fication  of  American  fishes — as  well  as  to  services  of 
the  most  valuable  kind  in  the  field  of  geology  and 
paleontology. 

Audubon's  story  is  a  curious  and  interesting  one. 
His  father,  the  son  of  a  Yendean  fisherman,  after 
working  his  way  up  to  the  command  of  a  French 
man-of-war,  purchased  a  plantation  in  Louisiana, 
which  at  that  time  belonged  to  France.  He  married 
there,  and  there,  in  1780,  John  James  Audubon  was 
born.  He  was  a  precocious  child,  and  early  developed 
a  love  for  nature,  which  his  parents  encouraged  in 
every  way  they  could.  He  was  especially  fond  of 
drawing  birds  and  coloring  his  drawings.  He  ac 
quired  so  much  skill  in  doing  this  that  his  father  sent 
him  to  Paris  and  placed  him  in  the  studio  of  the 
celebrated  painter,  David. 

It  is  related  of  young  Audubon  that  his  drawings 
for  many  years  fell  so  far  short  of  his  ideal,  that  on 
each  of  his  birthdays  he  regularly  made  a  bonfire  of 
all  he  had  produced  during  the  previous  year.  He 
cared  for  nothing  else,  however,  and  after  his  return 
to  America,  his  home  became  a  museum  of  birds' 
eggs  and  stuffed  birds.  He  took  long  tramps  through 
the  wilderness,  with  no  companions  save  dog  and  gun, 
all  the  time  adding  new  drawings  to  his  collection. 
Some  birds  he  was  obliged  to  shoot,  afterwards  sup 
porting  them  in  natural  positions  while  he  painted 
them;  others  which  he  could  not  approach,  he  drew 
with  the  aid  of  a  telescope,  representing  them  amid 

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their  natural  surroundings,  and  all  with  painstaking 
care  and  exactitude. 

This  work,  occupying  years  of  time,  and  accom 
panied  by  every  sort  of  suffering  and  exposure,  by 
long  trips  through  the  wilderness  of  the  west,  in  heat 
and  cold,  snow  and  rain,  was  carried  forward  from 
pure  love  of  nature  and  enthusiasm  for  the  work  it 
self,  without  thought  or  hope  of  reward.  Audubon's 
friends  began  to  consider  him  a  kind  of  harmless 
madman,  for  what  sane  person  would  devote  his  life 
to  a  work  so  laborious  and  seemingly  so  useless?  He 
made  a  little  money  occasionally  by  giving  drawing 
lessons;  but  he  was  never  content  except  when  roam 
ing  the  plains  and  forests,  hunting  for  some  new 
specimen.  For  his  ambition  was  to  study  and  draw 
every  kind  of  bird  which  lived  in  America. 

In  1824  he  happened  to  be  in  Philadelphia,  and 
met  there  a  son  of  Lucien  Bonaparte,  to  whom  he 
showed  his  drawings.  The  Frenchman  was  at  once 
deeply  interested,  for  he  saw  their  beauty  and  value, 
and  he  urged  upon  Audubon  that  some  arrangement 
be  made  by  which  they  could  be  published  and  given 
to  the  world.  The  obstacles  in  the  way  of  such  an 
enterprise  were  enormous,  for  the  processes  of  color 
reproduction  at  that  time  were  slow  and  expensive, 
and  it  was  estimated  that  the  cost  of  the  entire  work 
would  exceed  a  hundred  thousand  dollars. 

But  Audubon  had  overcome  obstacles  before  that, 
and  three  years  later  he  issued  the  prospectus  of  his 
famous  "Birds  of  America."  It  was  to  consist  of 
four  folio  volumes  of  plates,  and  the  price  of  each 

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Scientists  and  Educators 

copy  was  fixed  at  a  thousand  dollars.  Three  years 
more  were  spent  in  securing  subscriptions,  and  then 
the  work  of  publication  began,  though  Audubon  had 
barely  enough  money  to  pay  for  a  single  issue. 
Funds  came  in,  however,  after  the  appearance  of  the 
first  number,  and  the  work  went  steadily  forward  to 
completion  in  1839.  It  was  called  by  the  great 
naturalist,  Cuvier,  "  the  most  magnificent  monument 
that  art  ever  raised  to  ornithology."  It  contained 
448  beautifully  colored  plates,  showing  1065  species 
of  North  American  birds,  each  of  them  life  size. 

Before  it  was  completed,  Audubon  had  planned 
another  work  on  similar  lines,  to  be  known  as  "  The 
Quadrupeds  of  America,"  and  set  to  work  at  once  to 
gather  the  necessary  material,  which  meant  the  study 
from  life  of  each  of  these  animals.  He  even  pro 
jected  an  extensive  trip  to  the  Rocky  Mountains  in 
search  of  material,  but  was  pursuaded  by  his  friends 
to  give  it  up,  as  he  was  then  nearly  sixty  years  of  age, 
and  suffering  from  the  effects  of  his  long  years  of 
exposure.  His  sons  assisted  him  in  the  preparation  of 
the  work,  the  first  volume  of  which  appeared  in  1846, 
the  last  in  1854,  three  years  after  his  death. 

Audubon' s  life  illustrates  strikingly  the  compelling 
power  of  devotion  to  an  ideal.  Few  men  have  met 
such  discouragements  as  he,  and  fewer  still  have 
overcome  them.  For  many  years,  in  all  climates,  in 
all  weathers,  pausing  at  no  difficulty  or  peril,  his  life 
frequently  endangered  by  wild  beasts  or  still  wilder 
savages,  he  trudged  the  pathless  wilderness,  quite 
alone,  sleeping  under  a  rude  shelter  of  boughs  or  in 

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a  hollow  tree,  living  on  such  game  as  he  could  shoot, 
seeking  only  one  thing,  new  birds,  and  when  he 
found  them,  observing  their  habits  and  setting  them 
on  paper  with  an  infinite  patience.  On  one  occasion, 
rats  got  into  the  room  where  his  drawings  were 
stored,  and  destroyed  almost  all  of  them;  but  he  set 
to  work  at  once  re-drawing  them,  where  most  men 
would  have  given  up  in  despair.  His  work  remains 
to  this  day  the  standard  one  on  American  birds — a 
mighty  monument  to  the  ideals  of  its  maker. 

Jean  Louis  Rudolphe  Agassiz  was  also  a  born  nat 
uralist,  but  no  such  obstacles  confronted  him  as  Au- 
dubon  surmounted,  nor  did  he  strike  out  for  himself 
a  field  so  absolutely  original.  Born  in  Switzerland  in 
1807,  the  descendent  of  six  generations  of  preachers, 
but  destined  for  the  profession  of  medicine,  he  re 
fused  to  be  anything  but  a  naturalist.  From  his 
earliest  years,  he  showed  a  passion  for  gathering 
specimens,  and  his  first  collection  of  fishes  was  made 
when  he  was  ten  years  old.  He  received  the  very 
best  training  to  be  had  in  Switzerland,  France  and 
Germany,  and  early  attracted  attention  for  original 
work  of  the  most  important  description.  He  came 
to  be  recognized  as  the  greatest  authority  on  fishes 
in  Europe,  and  his  work  on  fossil  fishes,  published  in 
1843,  was  a  contribution  to  science  of  the  first  im 
portance. 

In  1846,  Agassiz  came  to  the  United  States,  partly 
to  deliver  a  course  of  lectures  at  Boston  and  partly  to 
make  himself  familiar  with  the  geology  and  natural 
history  of  this  country.  His  reception  was  so  cordial 

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and  he  found  so  much  to  interest  him  here,  that  he 
accepted  the  chair  of  zoology  and  geology  in  the 
Lawrence  Scientific  School  at  Cambridge,  Massa 
chusetts,  and  decided  to  make  the  United  States  his 
home.  He  soon  made  Cambridge  a  great  scientific 
centre,  and  proved  himself  the  most  inspiring,  mag 
netic  and  influential  teacher  of  science  this  country 
has  ever  seen. 

In  succeeding  years,  he  traversed  practically  the 
entire  country,  accumulating  vast  collections  of  speci 
mens  which  formed  the  foundation  of  the  great 
natural  history  museum  at  Cambridge.  He  was  pre 
paring  himself  for  the  publication  of  a  comprehensive 
work  to  be  called  "  Contributions  to  the  Natural 
History  of  the  United  States/'  the  first  volume  of 
which  appeared  in  1857.  Succeeding  years  were 
occupied  with  a  journey  to  Brazil,  another  around 
Cape  Horn,  and  the  establishment  of  the  Pekinese 
Island  school  of  natural  history,  where  he  was  able  to 
carry  out  his  long  contemplated  plan  of  teaching 
directly  from  nature.  But  his  labors  had  impaired 
his  health,  and  he  died  in  Cambridge  in  1873,  after 
a  short  illness.  His  grave  is  marked  by  a  boulder 
from  the  glacier  of  the  Aar,  and  shaded  by  pine  trees 
brought  from  his  native  Switzerland. 

Agassiz  was  one  of  the  most  remarkable  teachers 
of  science  that  ever  lived.  Handsome,  enthusiastic, 
overflowing  with  vitality,  and  with  a  learning  broad 
and  deep,  his  students  found  in  him  a  real  inspiration 
to  intellectual  endeavor.  His  lectures,  however 
technical  and  abstruse  their  subjects,  were  of  an  in- 

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comparable  clarity  and  simplicity.  He  was  one  of  the 
first  to  advocate  the  teaching  of  science  to  women, 
not  in  its  technical  details,  but  in  its  broad  outlines. 

"  What  I  wish  for  you,"  he  said,  one  day,  address 
ing  a  class  of  girls,  "  is  a  culture  that  is  alive  and 
active.  My  instruction  is  only  intended  to  show  you 
the  thoughts  in  nature  which  science  reveals. 

"A  physical  fact  is  as  sacred  as  a  moral  principle," 
he  used  to  say.  "  Our  own  nature  demands  from  us 
this  double  allegiance." 

Of  the  pupils  of  Agassiz,  not  the  least  famous  was 
his  son,  Alexander,  who,  after  graduating  from  Har 
vard,  assisted  his  father  in  his  work,  collected  many 
specimens  for  the  museum  at  Cambridge,  and  was 
finally  appointed  assistant  in  zoology  there.  In  the 
following  years  he  put  his  scientific  knowledge  to  a 
very  practical  use.  In  his  geological  surveys  of  the 
country,  he  had  been  impressed  with  the  richness  of 
the  copper  mines  on  Lake  Superior.  For  five  years, 
he  acted  as  superintendent  of  the  famous  Calumet 
and  Hecla  mines,  developing  them  into  the  most  suc 
cessful  copper  mines  in  the  world,  and  himself  gam 
ing  wealth  from  them  which  permitted  his  making 
gifts  to  Harvard  aggregating  half  a  million  dollars. 
It  was  characteristic  of  him  that,  after  his  service 
with  the  Calumet  and  Hecla,  he  resumed  his  duties 
at  the  museum  at  Cambridge,  and  continued  as 
curator  until  ill  health  compelled  his  resignation  in 
1885. 

Among  other  pupils  of  Agassiz  who  won  more 
than  ordinary  fame  as  naturalists  may  be  mentioned 

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Albert  Smitli  Bickmore,  Alonzo  Howard  Clark, 
Charles  Frederick  Hartt,  Alpheus  Hyatt,  Theodore 
Lyman,  Edward  Sylvester  Morse,  Alpheus  Spring 
Packard,  Frederick  Ward  Putnam,  Samuel  Hubbard 
Scudder,  Nathaniel  Southgate  Shaler,  William 
Stimpson,  Sanborn  Tenney,  Addison  Emory  Merrill, 
Burt  Green  Wilder  and  Henry  Augustus  Ward — as 
brilliant  a  galaxy  of  names  as  American  science  can 
boast,  bearing  remarkable  testimony  to  the  inspiring 
qualities  of  their  great  teacher. 

What  Agassiz  did  for  geology  and  natural  history, 
Asa  Gray  to  some  extent  did  for  botany.  Born  at 
Pari?,  N.  Y.,  in  1810,  and  at  an  early  age  abandoning 
the  study  of  medicine  for  that  of  botany,  he  accepted, 
in  1842,  a  call  to  the  Fisher  professorship  of  natural 
history  at  Harvard,  a  post  which  he  held  for  over 
thirty  years.  Gray's  work  began  at  the  time  when 
the  old  artificial  system  of  classification  was  giving 
way  to  the  natural  system,  and  he,  perhaps  more  than 
any  other  one  man,  established  this  system  firmly  on 
the  basis  of  affinity. 

In  1864,  he  presented  to  Harvard  his  herbarium  of 
more  than  two  hundred  thousand  specimens,  and  his 
botanical  library.  He  remained  in  charge  of  the 
herbarium  until  his  death,  adding  to  it  constantly, 
until  it  became  one  of  the  most  complete  in  the  world. 
His  publications  upon  the  subject  of  botany  were 
numerous  and  of  the  highest  order  of  scholarship, 
and  long  before  his  death  he  was  recognized  as  the 
foremost  botanist  of  the  country. 

Scarcely  inferior  to  him  in  reputation  was  John 
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Torrey.  It  was  to  Torrey  that  Gray  owed  his  first 
lessons  in  botany,  and  if  the  pupil  afterwards 
surpassed  the  master,  it  was  because  he  was  able 
to  build  on  the  foundations  which  the  master  laid. 
John  Torrey,  born  in  New  York  City  in  1796, 
was  the  son  of  a  Revolutionary  soldier,  and  in 
early  life  determined  to  become  a  machinist,  but 
afterwards  studied  medicine  and  began  to  practice 
in  New  York,  taking  up  the  study  of  botany  as  an 
avocation.  He  found  the  profession  of  medicine 
uncongenial,  and  finally  abandoned  it  altogether  for 
science,  serving  for  many  years  as  professor  of  chem 
istry  and  botany  at  the  College  of  Physicians  and 
Surgeons  in  New  York  City.  The  succeeding  years 
brought  him  many  honors,  and  saw  many  works  of 
importance  issue  from  his  hands. 

The  progress  of  the  last  century  in  the  various 
branches  of  science  is  an  interesting  study,  and 
America  has  made  no  inconsiderable  contributions 
to  every  one  of  them.  In  astronomy,  six  names  are 
worthy  of  mention  here.  The  first  of  these,  John 
William  Draper,  was  noted  for  his  devotion  to  many 
other  lines  of  science,  especially  to  photography,  and 
was  the  first  person  in  the  world  to  take  a  photograph, 
of  a  human  being.  His  service  to  astronomy  was  in 
the  application  of  photography  to  that  science.  In 
1840,  he  took  the  first  photograph  ever  made  of  the 
moon,  and  a  few  years  later  published  his  "  Produc 
tion  of  Light  by  Heat,"  an  early  and  exceedingly 
important  contribution  to  the  subject  of  spectrum 
analysis. 

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His  work  in  astronomy  and  more  especially  in 
physics  was  carried  on  most  worthily  by  his  son, 
Henry  Draper,  who,  at  his  home  at  Hastings-on-the- 
Hudson,  built  himself  an  observatory,  mounting  in 
it  a  reflecting  telescope,  which  he  also  made.  His 
description  of  the  processes  of  grinding,  polishing, 
silvering,  testing  and  mounting  it  has  remained  the 
standard  work  on  the  subject.  With  this  telescope 
he  took  a  photograph  of  the  moon  which  remains  one 
of  the  best  that  has  ever  been  made.  Among  his 
other  noteworthy  achievements  were  his  spectrum 
photographs  of  1872  and  1873,  and  in  1880  his 
photograph  of  the  great  nebula  in  Orion,  the  first 
photograph  of  a  nebula  ever  secured.  Perhaps  the 
most  brilliant  discovery  ever  made  in  physical  science 
by  an  American  was  that  by  Draper  in  1877,  when 
he  demonstrated  the  presence  of  oxygen  in  the  sun 
so  conclusively  that  it  could  not  be  disputed.  It  was 
a  sort  of  tour  de  force  that  took  the  scientific  world 
by  surprise  and  gained  its  author  the  widest  recogni 
tion. 

The  services  of  Lewis  Morris  Rutherford  to 
astronomy  resembled  in  many  ways  those  of  Draper. 
Starting  in  life  as  a  lawyer,  he  abandoned  that  pro 
fession  at  the  age  of  thirty-three  to  devote  his  whole 
time  to  science,  principally  to  the  perfection  of 
astronomical  photography  and  spectrum  analysis. 
The  service  which  photography  has  rendered  to 
astronomy  can  scarcely  be  overestimated,  and  these- 
pioneers  in  the  art  were  laying  the  foundations  for 
its  recent  wonderful  developments.  He  was  the  first 

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to  attempt  to  classify  the  stars  according  to  their 
spectra,  and  invented  a  number  of  instruments  of  the 
greatest  service  in  star  photography.  All  in  all,  it  is 
doubtful  if  anyone  added  more  to  the  development 
of  this  branch  of  the  science  than  did  he. 

Very  different  from  the  services  of  these  men  were 
those  rendered  the  science  of  astronomy  by  Charles 
Augustus  Young.  Called  to  the  chair  of  astronomy 
at  Princeton  University  in  1877,  he  held  that  impor 
tant  position  for  thirty  years,  his  courses  a  source  of 
inspiration  to  his  students.  He  was  a  member  of 
many  important  scientific  expeditions,  invented  an 
automatic  spectroscope  which  has  never  been  dis 
placed,  measured  the  velocity  of  the  sun's  rotation, 
and  was  a  large  contributor  to  public  knowledge  of 
the  science. 

Equally  important  have  been  the  contributions 
made  by  Samuel  Pierpont  Langley,  perhaps  the 
greatest  authority  on  the  sun  alive  to-day.  He 
showed  a  decided  fondness  for  astronomy  even  as  a 
boy,  and  at  the  age  of  thirty  was  assistant  in  the 
observatory  at  Harvard.  Two  years  later,  he  was 
invited  to  fill  the  chair  of  astronomy  in  the  Western 
University  of  Pennsylvania  at  Pittsburgh,  and  his 
work  there  began  with  the  establishment  of  a  com 
plete  time  service,  the  first  step  toward  the  present 
daily  time  service  conducted  by  the  government.  In 
1870,  he  began  the  series  of  brilliant  researches  on 
the  sun  which  have  placed  him  at  the  head  of 
authorities  on  that  body.  His  scientific  papers  are 
very  numerous  and  his  series  of  magazine  articles  on 

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"  The  New  Astronomy  "  did  much  to  acquaint  the 
public  with  the  rapid  development  of  the  science. 
In  1887,  he  was  chosen  to  the  important  post  of 
secretary  of  the  Smithsonian  Institution,  and  his 
recent  years  have  been  spent  in  experimenting  with 
aeronautics. 

Simon  Newcomb  is  another  who  rendered  yeoman 
service  to  the  science.  Born  in  Nova  Scotia,  the  son 
of  the  village  schoolmaster,  he  lived  to  become  one 
of  the  eight  foreign  associates  of  the  Institute  of 
France,  the  first  native  American  since  Franklin  to 
be  so  honored;  to  win  the  Huygens  medal,  given  once 
in  twenty  years  to  the  astronomer  who  had  done  the 
greatest  service  to  the  science  in  that  period,  and  to 
receive  the  highest  degree  from  practically  every 
American  college. 

In  his  autobiography  he  tells  how,  at  the  age  of 
five,  he  began  to  study  arithmetic,  at  twelve  algebra, 
and  at  thirteen  Euclid.  At  the  age  of  eighteen,  plan 
ning  to  make  his  way  to  the  United  States,  he  set  out 
on  foot,  taught  school  for  a  year  or  so,  and  then 
attracted  the  attention  of  Prof.  Joseph  Henry,  of  the 
Smithsonian  Institution,  by  sending  him  a  problem  in 
algebra.  The  unusual  aptitude  for  mathematics 
which  the  boy  possessed  so  impressed  Prof.  Henry, 
that  he  set  him  to  work  as  a  computer  on  the 
Nautical  Almanac;  but  he  was  soon  attracted  to 
"  exact,' '  or  mathematical  astronomy,  which  became 
his  life  work.  Some  idea  of  its  importance  may  be 
gained  when  it  is  stated  that  every  astronomer  in  the 
world  to-day  uses  his  determinations  of  the  move- 

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ments  of  the  planets  and  the  moon;  every  skipper  in 
the  world  guides  his  ship  by  tables  which  Newcomb 
devised;  and  every  eclipse  is  computed  according  to 
his  tables.  He  supervised  the  construction  and 
mounting  of  the  equatorial  telescope  in  the  naval 
observatory  at  Washington,  the  Lick  telescope,  and 
Russia  applied  to  him,  in  1873,  for  aid  in  placing 
her  great  telescope. 

A  man  of  humor,  sympathy  and  anecdote,  he 
found,  in  the  fall  of  1908,  that  he  was  suffering  from 
cancer,  and  hastened  the  work  on  the  moon,  which 
was  to  be  his  masterpiece.  Ten  months  later,  he  was 
told  that  his  course  was  nearly  run — and  his  great 
work  was  still  incomplete. 

"  Take  me  to  Washington,"  he  said,  "  I  must  work 
while  there  is  time." 

And  there,  lying  in  agony  on  his  bed,  for  three 
weeks  he  dictated  steadily  to  stenographers  on  a  sub 
ject  which  required  the  utmost  concentration.  His 
indomitable  will  alone  supported  him,  and  a  week 
after  the  last  word  had  been  written,  came  the  end. 
Verily,  there  was  a  man ! 

The  last  of  the  great  American  astronomers  whom 
we  shall  mention  here  is  Edward  Charles  Pickering, 
whose  name  is  so  closely  connected  with  the  develop 
ment  of  the  great  observatory  at  Harvard.  Born  at 
Boston,  and  educated  at  the  Lawrence  Scientific 
School,  his  first  work  was  in  the  field  of  physics,  but 
in  1876,  he  was  appointed  professor  of  astronomy 
and  geodesy,  and  director  of  the  Harvard  observa 
tory,  which,  under  his  management,  has  become  of 

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the  first  importance.  His  principal  work  has  been 
the  determination  of  the  relative  brightness  of  the 
stars,  and  many  thousands  have  been  charted.  On 
the  death  of  Henry  Draper,  the  study  of  the  spectra 
of  the  stars  by  means  of  photography  was  continued 
as  a  memorial  to  that  great  scientist,  and  the  results 
obtained  have  been  of  the  most  important  character, 
including  a  star  map  of  the  entire  heavens.  Other 
phases  of  the  science  of  scarcely  less  importance  have 
been  carefully  developed,  and  the  work  which  has 
been  done  under  Pickering's  direction,  is  second  to 
none  in  the  history  of  the  science.  Not  satisfied  with 
the  ISTorthern  hemisphere,  a  branch  has  been  estab 
lished  in  Peru,  in  which  the  observatory's  methods 
of  research  have  been  extended  to  the  south  celestial 
pole.  So  for  eighteen  years  and  more,  it  has  kept 
ceaseless  watch  of  the  heavens,  with  an  accuracy  of 
which  the  world  has  hardly  a  conception.  For  this 
great  work  the  scientific  world  must  pay  tribute  to 
the  genius  and  perseverance  of  Edward  Charles  Pick 
ering. 

The  second  department  of  science  claiming  our 
attention  is  that  of  paleontology.  Here  one  of  the 
most  eminent  of  American  names  is  that  of  Othniel 
Charles  Marsh.  A  graduate  of  Yale  and  firmly 
grounded  in  zoology  and  kindred  sciences  by  a  course 
of  study  at  Heidelberg  and  Berlin,  he  returned  to 
the  United  States  in  1866  to  accept  the  chair  of  pale 
ontology  which  had  been  established  for  him  at 
Yale.  The  remainder  of  his  life  was  devoted  to  the 
original  investigation  of  extinct  vertebrates,  espe- 

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cially  in  the  Rocky  Mountain  regions.  In  these  ex 
plorations,  more  than  a  thousand  new  species  of 
extinct  vertebrates  were  brought  to  light,  many  of 
which  possess  great  scientific  interest,  representing 
new  orders  never  before  discovered  in  America.  So 
important  was  this  work  that  the  national  geological 
survey  undertook  the  publication  of  his  reports, 
which  formed  the  most  remarkable  contributions  to 
the  subject  ever  written  in  this  country,  attracting 
the  attention  and  admiration  of  the  whole  scientific 
world. 

Associated  with  Marsh  as  paleontologist  for  the 
Geological  Survey  was  Edward  Drinker  Cope,  whose 
work  was  second  only  to  the  older  man's  in  impor 
tance.  He  also  devoted  much  of  his  attention  to  the 
exploration  of  the  Rocky  Mountain  region,  and  found 
that  there,  in  the  strata  of  the  ancient  lake  beds,  rec 
ords  of  the  age  of  mammals  had  been  made  and  pre 
served  with  a  fulness  surpassing  that  of  any  other 
known  region  on  earth.  The  profusion  of  vertebrate 
remains  brought  to  light  was  almost  unbelievable. 
Prof.  Marsh,  who  was  first  in  the  field,  found  three 
hundred  new  tertiary  species  between  1870  and  1876, 
besides  unearthing  the  remains  of  two  hundred  birds 
with  teeth,  six  hundred  flying  dragons,  and  fifteen 
hundred  sea  serpents,  some  of  them  sixty  feet  in 
length.  In  a  single  bed  of  rock  not  larger  than  a 
good  sized  lecture  room,  he  found  the  remains  of  no 
less  than  one  hundred  and  sixty  mammals. 

It  was  this  work  which  Prof.  Cope  took  up  and 
carried  forward.  Its  importance  may  be  appreciated 

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when  it  is  stated  that  among  these  remains  are  found 
examples  of  just  such  intermediate  types  of  organ 
isms  as  must  have  existed  if  the  succession  of  life  on 
the  earth  has  been  an  unbroken  lineal  succession. 
Here  are  snakes  with  wings  and  legs,  and  birds  with 
teeth  and  other  snakelike  characteristics,  bridging  the 
gap  between  modern  birds  and  reptiles.  The  line  of 
descent  of  the  horse,  the  camel,  the  hippopotamus 
and  other  mammals  has  been  traced  to  a  single 
ancestor,  the  result  being  the  proof  of  the  theory  of 
evolution. 

The  whole  work  of  American  paleontology  has, 
of  course,  been  along  these  lines.  Agassiz  himself 
was  a  living  and  vital  force  in  it,  as  were  such  men 
as  Joseph  Leidy  and  H.  F.  Osborne. 

It  is  a  remarkable  fact  that  one  of  the  few  truly 
original  and  novel  ideas  the  past  century  can  boast, 
and  the  one  which  has  had  the  deepest  influence  on 
geology,  had  its  origin  in  the  brain  of  an  illiterate 
Swiss  chamois  hunter  named  Perraudin.  Throughout 
the  Alps,  on  lofty  crags,  great  bowlders  were  often 
found,  which  had  no  relation  to  the  geology  of  the  re 
gion  and  which  were  called  erratics,  because  they  had 
evidently  come  there  from  a  distance.  But  how? 
Scientists  explained  it  in  many  ways,  but  it  remained 
for  the  mountaineer  to  suggest  that  the  bowlders  had 
been  left  in  their  present  positions  by  glaciers.  The 
scientific  world  laughed  at  the  idea,  but  ten  years 
later,  it  was  brought  to  the  attention  of  Louis 
Agassiz;  he  investigated  it,  became  a  convert,  and 

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saw  that  its  implications  extended  far  beyond  the 
Alps,  for  these  erratic  bowlders  were  found  on  moun 
tains  and  plains  throughout  the  northern  hemisphere. 
Agassiz  found  everywhere  evidences  of  glacial  action, 
and  became  convinced  that  at  one  time  a  great  ice 
cap  had  covered  the  globe  down  to  the  higher  lati 
tudes  of  the  northern  hemisphere.  So  came  the  con 
ception  of  a  universal  Ice  Age,  now  one  of  the 
accepted  tenets  of  geology. 

The  dean  of  American  geologists  was  Benjamin 
Silliman,  who,  at  the  very  beginning  of  the  nine 
teenth  century,  took  up  at  Yale  University  the  work 
which  he  was  to  carry  on  so  successfully  for  more 
than  fifty  years.  As  an  inspiring  teacher  he  was 
scarcely  less  successful  than  Agassiz  at  a  later  day. 
His  popular  lectures  began  in  1808  and  soon  attracted 
to  K"ew  Haven  the  brightest  young  men  in  the  coun 
try.  Among  them  was  James  Dwight  Dana,  who 
was  to  carry  on  most  worthily  the  work  which  Prof. 
Silliman  had  begun. 

James  Dwight  Dana  was  attracted  to  Yale  by 
Prof.  Silliman's  great  reputation  and  received  there 
the  inspiration  which  started  him  upon  a  scientific 
career.  Three  years  after  his  graduation,  he  was  ap 
pointed  assistant  to  his  former  instructor,  and  two 
years  later  sailed  for  the  South  Seas  as  mineralogist 
and  geologist  of  the  United  States  exploring  expedi 
tion  commanded  by  Charles  Wilkes.  He  was  absent 
for  three  years  and  spent  thirteen  more  in  studying 
and  classifying  the  material  he  had  collected.  He 
then  resumed  his  work  at  Yale,  succeeding  Prof. 

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Silliman  in  the  chair  of  geology  and  mineralogy. 
His  work  was  recognized  throughout  the  world  as 
most  important,  and  many  honors  were  conferred 
upon  him. 

Another  famous  name  in  American  geology  is  that 
of  John  Strong  dewberry.  His  name  is  connected 
principally  with  the  explorations  of  the  Columbia 
and  Colorado  rivers.  He  was  afterwards  appointed 
professor  of  geology  and  paleontology  at  the  Colum 
bia  College  School  of  Mines,  and  took  charge  of  that 
department  in  the  autumn  of  1866.  During  his  con 
nection  with  the  institution,  he  created  a  museum  of 
over  one  hundred  thousand  specimens,  principally 
collected  by  himself,  containing  the  best  representa 
tion  of  the  mineral  resources  of  the  United  States 
to  be  found  anywhere. 

Among  the  pupils  of  Prof.  Silliman  who  after 
wards  won  a  wide  reputation  was  Josiah  Dwight 
Whitney.  Graduating  from  Yale  in  1839,  he  spent 
five  years  studying  in  Europe,  and  then,  returning  to 
America,  was  connected  with  the  survey  of  the  Lake 
Superior  region,  of  Iowa,  of  the  upper  Missouri, 
and  of  California,  issuing  a  number  of  books  giv 
ing  the  results  of  these  investigations,  and  in 
1865,  being  called  to  the  chair  of  geology  at  Har 
vard. 

Still  another  of  Prof.  Silliman's  pupils  was  Edward 
Hitchcock,  whose  life  was  an  unusually  interesting 
one.  His  parents  were  poor  and  he  spent  his  boy 
hood  working  on  a  farm  or  as  a  carpenter,  gaining 
such  education  as  he  could  by  studying  at  night. 

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Deciding  to  enter  the  ministry,  he  managed  to  work 
his  way  through  Yale  theological  seminary,  graduat 
ing  at  the  age  of  twenty-seven.  It  was  here  that  he 
came  under  the  influence  of  Prof.  Silliman,  and  after 
a  laboratory  course  and  much  field  work,  he  was 
chosen  professor  of  chemistry  and  natural  history  at 
Amherst  College.  He  held  this  position  for  twenty 
years,  and  in  1845  was  chosen  president  of  the  col 
lege,  transforming  it,  before  his  retirement  nine 
years  later,  from  a  poor  and  struggling  institu 
tion  into  a  well-endowed  and  firmly  established  one. 
He  had  meanwhile  served  as  state  geologist  of 
Massachusetts,  and  completed  the  first  survey  of 
an  entire  state  ever  made  by  authority  of  a  govern 
ment. 

The  most  important  recent  contribution  to  Ameri 
can  geology  has  been  the  three  volume  work  issued  in 
1904-5,  under  the  joint  editorship  of  Thomas  C. 
Chamberlain  and  Rollin  D.  Salisbury.  Both  are 
geologists  of  wide  experience,  and  their  work  pre 
sents  the  present  status  of  the  science  interestingly 
and  simply. 

America  has  had  her  full  share  of  daring  and 
successful  surgeons,  and  in  the  science  of  surgery 
stands  to-day  second  to  no  nation  on  earth,  but  per 
haps  the  most  famous  American  surgeon  who  ever 
lived  was  Valentine  Mott.  Dr.  Mott  was  descended 
from  a  long  line  of  Quaker  ancestors,  and  was  born, 
in  1785.  His  father  was  a  physician,  and  Dr.  Mott 
began  his  medical  and  surgical  studies  at  the  age  of 

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nineteen,  first  in  New  York  City,  and  afterwards  in 
the  hospitals  of  London,  where  he  made  a  specialty 
of  the  study  of  practical  anatomy  by  the  method  of 
dissection.  At  that  time  there  was  in  this  country 
a  deep-seated  prejudice  against  the  use  of  the  human 
body  for  this  purpose,  and  the  experience  which  Dr. 
Mott  secured  in  London,  and  which  stood  him  in  such 
good  stead  in  after  years,  would  have  been  impossible 
of  attainment  here.  A  year  was  also  spent  in  Edin 
burgh,  and  finally,  in  1809,  Dr.  Mott  returned  to 
America  with  an  exceptional  equipment. 

His  skill  won  him  a  wide  reputation  and  he 
was  soon  recognized  as  one  of  the  first  surgeons  of 
the  age.  His  boldness  and  originality  were  excep 
tional,  and  his  success  was  no  doubt  due  in  some 
degree  to  his  constant  practice  throughout  his  life  of 
performing  every  novel  and  important  operation 
upon  a  cadaver  before  operating  upon  the  living  sub 
ject.  To  describe  in  detail  the  operations  which  he 
originated  would  be  too  technical  for  such  a  book  as 
this,  but  many  of  them  were  of  the  first  importance. 
Sir  Astley  Cooper  said  of  him :  "  Dr.  Mott  has  per 
formed  more  of  the  great  operations  than  any  man 
living,  or  that  ever  did  live."  He  possessed  all  the 
qualifications  of  a  great  operator,  extraordinary  keen 
ness  of  sight,  steadiness  of  nerve,  and  physical  vigor. 
He  could  use  his  left  hand  as  skillfully  as  his  right, 
and  developed  a  dexterity  which  has  never  been  sur 
passed. 

Tt  should  be  remembered  that  in  those  days  the  use 
of  anaesthetics  had  not  yet  been  discovered,  and  every 

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operation  had  to  be  performed  upon  the  conscious 
subject,  as  he  lay  strapped  upon  the  table  shrieking 
with  agony.  To  perform  an  operation  under  such 
circumstances  required  an  iron  nerve.  Dr.  Mott  was 
one  of  the  first  to  recognize  the  value  of  anaesthetics, 
and  his  use  of  them,  immediately  following  their  dis 
covery,  greatly  facilitated  their  rapid  and  general  in 
troduction. 

It  is  one  of  the  boasts  of  American  medicine  that 
the  first  man  in  the  world  to  conceive  the  idea  that 
the  administration  of  a  definite  drug  might  render 
a  surgical  operation  painless  was  an  American — • 
Crawford  "W.  Long.  Dr.  Long  graduated  from  the 
medical  department  of  the  University  of  Pennsyl 
vania  in  1839.  When  a  student,  he  had  once  inhaled 
ether  for  its  intoxicant  effects,  and  while  partially 
under  the  influence  of  the  drug,  had  noticed  that  a 
chance  blow  to  his  shin  produced  no  pain.  This 
gave  him  the  idea  that  ether  might  be  used  in  surgi 
cal  operations,  and  on  March  30,  1842,  at  Jefferson, 
Georgia,  he  used  it  with  entire  success.  He  repeated 
the  experiment  several  times,  but  he  did  not  entirely 
trust  the  evidence  of  these  experiments.  So  he  de 
layed  announcing  the  discovery  until  he  had  sub 
jected  it  to  further  tests,  and  while  these  experiments 
were  going  on,  another  American,  Dr.  "W.  T.  G. 
Morton,  of  Boston,  also  hit  upon  the  great  discovery 
and  announced  it  to  the  world. 

Dr.  Morton  was  a  dentist  who,  in  1841,  introduced 
a  new  kind  of  solder  by  which  false  teeth  could  be 
fastened  to  gold  plates.  Then,  in  the  endeavor  to 

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extract  teeth  without  pain,  lie  tried  stimulants, 
opium  and  magnetism  without  success,  and  finally 
sulphuric  ether.  On  September  30,  1846,  he  ad 
ministered  ether  to  a  patient  and  removed  a  tooth 
without  pain;  the  next  day  he  repeated  the  experi 
ment,  and  the  next.  Then,  filled  with  the  immense 
possibilities  of  his  discovery,  he  went  to  Dr.  J.  C. 
Warren,  one  of  the  foremost  surgeons  of  Boston,  and 
asked  permission  to  test  it  decisively  on  one  of  the 
patients  at  the  Boston  hospital  during  a  severe  opera 
tion.  The  request  was  granted,  and  on  October  16, 
1846,  the  test  was  made  in  the  presence  of  a  large 
body  of  surgeons  and  students.  The  patient  slept 
quietly  while  the  surgeon's  knife  was  plied,  and 
awoke  to  an  astonished  comprehension  that  the 
dreadful  ordeal  was  over.  The  impossible,  the 
miraculous,  had  been  accomplished;  suffering  man 
kind  had  received  such  a  blessing  as  it  had  never  re 
ceived  before,  and  American  surgery  had  scored  its 
greatest  triumph.  Swiftly  as  steam  could  carry  it, 
the  splendid  news  was  heralded  to  all  the  world,  and 
its  truth  was  soon  established  by  repeated  experi 
ments. 

To  tell  of  the  work  of  the  men  who  came  after 
these  pioneers  in  the  field  of  surgery  and  medicine  is 
a  task  quite  beyond  the  compass  of  this  little  volume. 
There  are  at  least  a  score  whose  achievements  are  of 
the  first  importance,  and  nowhere  in  the  world  has 
this  great  science,  which  has  for  its  aim  the  allevia 
tion  of  human  suffering,  reached  a  higher  develop 
ment. 

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Among  tlie  physicists  of  the  country,  Joseph; 
Henry  takes  a  high  place.  His  boyhood  and  youth, 
were  passed  in  a  struggle  for  existence.  He  was 
placed  in  a  store  at  the  age  of  ten,  and  remained 
there  for  five  years.  At  the  age  of  fifteen  he  was 
apprenticed  to  a  watchmaker,  and  had  some  thought 
of  studying  for  the  stage,  but  during  a  brief  illness, 
he  started  to  read  Dr.  Gregory's  "  Lectures  on  Ex 
perimental  Philosophy,  Astronomy  and  Chemistry," 
and  forthwith  decided  to  become  a  scientist.  He 
began  to  study  in  the  evenings,  managed  to  take  a 
course  of  instruction  at  the  academy  at  Albany,  New 
York,  and  finally,  in  1826,  was  made  professor  of 
mathematics  there. 

Almost  at  once  began  a  series  of  brilliant  experi 
ments  in  electricity  which  have  linked  his  name  with 
that  of  Benjamin  Franklin  as  one  of  the  two  most 
original  investigators  in  that  branch  of  science  which 
this  country  has  ever  produced.  His  first  work  was 
the  improving  of  existing  forms  of  apparatus,  and 
his  first  important  discovery  was  that  of  the  electro 
magnet.  His  development  of  the  "  intensity  "  mag 
net  in  1830  made  the  electric  telegraph  a  possibility. 
Two  years  later  he  was  called  to  the  chair  of  natural 
philosophy  at  Princeton  University,  where  he  con 
tinued  his  investigations,  many  of  which  have  been 
of  permanent  value  to  science.  In  1846,  he  was 
elected  first  secretary  of  the  Smithsonian  Institution, 
and  removed  to  Washington,  where  the  last  forty 
years  of  his  life  were  passed  in  the  development  of 
the  great  scientific  establishment  of  which  he  was  the 

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head.  He  steadily  refused  the  most  flattering  offers 
of  other  positions,  among  them  the  presidency  of 
Princeton,  and  like  Agassiz,  he  might  have  answered, 
when  tempted  by  larger  salaries,  "  I  cannot  afford  to 
waste  my  time  in  making  money."  To  his  efforts  is 
largely  due  the  establishment  of  the  national  light 
house  system,  as  well  as  that  of  the  national  weather 
bureau. 

Besides  his  services  to  American  science  as  in 
structor  at  Harvard  College,  Louis  Agassiz  rendered 
another  when  he  persuaded  Arnold  Guyot,  his  col 
league  in  the  college  at  Neuchatel,  to  accompany  him 
to  this  country.  Guyot  was  at  that  time  forty  years 
old,  and  was  already  widely  known  as  a  geologist  and 
naturalist,  and  the  delivery  of  a  series  of  lectures 
before  the  Lowell  Institute,  established  his  reputa 
tion  in  this  country.  He  was  soon  invited  to  the 
chair  of  physical  geography  and  geology  at  Prince 
ton,  which  he  held  until  his  death.  He  founded  the 
museum  at  Princeton,  which  has  since  become  one 
of  the  best  of  its  kind  in  the  United  States.  Perhaps 
he  is  best  known  for  the  series  of  geographies  he  pre 
pared,  and  which  were  at  one  time  widely  used  in 
schools  throughout  the  United  States. 

Perhaps  no  family  has  been  more  closely  asso 
ciated  with  American  science  than  that  of  the  Hu 
guenot  Le  Conte,  who  settled  at  New  Eochelle,  New 
York,  about  the  close  of  the  seventeenth  century, 
moving  afterwards  to  New  Jersey.  There,  in  1782, 
Lewis  Le  Conte  was  born.  He  was  graduated  at 
Columbia  at  the  age  of  seventeen  and  started  to  study 

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medicine,  but  was  soon  afterwards  called  to  the  man 
agement  of  the  family  estates  of  Woodsmanston,  in 
j  Georgia.  There  he  established  a  botanical  garden 
and  a  laboratory  in  which  he  tested  the  discoveries 
of  the  chemists  of  the  day.  His  death  resulted  from 
poison  that  was  taken  into  his  system  while  dressing 
a  wound  for  a  member  of  his  family. 

His  son,  John  Le  Conte,  after  studying  medicine 
and  beginning  the  practice  of  his  profession  at  Sa 
vannah,  Georgia,  was  called  to  the  chair  of  natural 
philosophy  and  chemistry  at  Franklin  College,  and 
after  some  years  in  educational  work,  was  appointed 
professor  of  physics  and  industrial  mechanics  in  the 
University  of  California,  which  position  he  held  until 
his  death,  serving  also  for  some  years  as  president 
of  the  University.  His  scientific  work  extended  over 
a  period  of  more  than  half  a  century,  being  confined 
almost  exclusively  to  physical  science,  in  which  he 
was  one  of  the  first  authorities. 

Another  son  of  Lewis,  Joseph  Le  Conte,  like  his 
brother,  studied  medicine  and  started  to  practice  it; 
but  in  1850,  attracted  by  the  great  work  being  done 
by  Louis  Agassiz,  he  entered  the  Lawrence  Scientific 
School  at  Harvard,  devoting  his  attention  especially 
to  geology.  After  holding  a  number  of  minor  posi 
tions,  he  became  professor  of  geology  and  natural 
history  in  the  University  of  California  in  1869,  and 
his  most  important  work  was  done  there  in  the  shape 
of  original  investigations  in  geology,  which  placed 
.  him  in  the  front  rank  of  American  geologists. 

Lewis  Le  Conte  had  a  brother,  John  Eathan  Le 
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Scientists  and  Educators 

Conte,  who  was  also  widely  known  as  a  naturalist  of 
unusual  attainments.  He  published  many  papers 
upon  various  branches  of  botany  and  zoology,  and 
collected  a  vast  amount  of  material  for  a  natural 
history  of  American  insects,  only  a  part  of  which  was 
published.  His  son,  John  Lawrence  Le  Conte,  was 
a  pupil  of  Agassiz,  and  conducted  extensive  explora 
tions  of  the  Lake  Superior  and  upper  Mississippi 
regions,  and  of  the  Colorado  river.  He  afterwards 
made  a  number  of  expeditions  to  Honduras,  Panama, 
Europe,  Egypt  and  Algiers,  collecting  material  for  a 
work  on  the  fauna  of  the  world,  which,  however,  was 
left  uncompleted  at  his  death. 

American  science  recently  suffered  a  heavy  loss  in 
the  death  of  Nathaniel  Southgate  Shaler,  one  of  the 
most  brilliant  of  the  pupils  of  Agassiz,  and  from  1864 
until  the  time  of  his  death,  connected  with  the  geo 
logical  department  of  Harvard  University,  rising  to 
the  full  professorship  in  geology,  which  he  held  for 
over  twenty  years,  and  to  the  position  of  dean  of  the 
Lawrence  Scientific  School.  He  did  much  to  increase 
public  interest  in  and  knowledge  of  the  development 
of  the  science  by  frequent  popular  articles  in  the 
leading  magazines,  in  addition  to  more  technical 
books  and  memoirs  intended  especially  for  scientists. 

Of  living  scientists,  we  can  do  no  more  than  men 
tion  a  few.  Perhaps  the  most  famous,  and  dearest  to 
the  popular  heart  is  John  Burroughs,  a  nature  phi 
losopher,  if  there  ever  was  one,  a  keen  observer  of  the 
life  of  field  and  forest,  and  the  author  of  a  long  list 
of  lovable  books.  One  of  the  leaders  in  the  "  return 

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to  nature  "  movement  which  has  reached  such  wide 
proportions  of  recent  years,  he  has  held  his  position 
as  its  prophet  and  interpreter  against  the  assaults  of 
younger,  more  energetic,  but  narrower  men. 

Prominent  in  the  same  field  is  Liberty  Hyde 
Bailey,  since  1903  director  of  the  College  of  Agri 
culture  at  Cornell  University.  His  early  training 
took  place  under  Asa  Gray,  and  his  attention  has  been 
devoted  principally  to  botanical  and  horticultural 
subjects.  He  has  written  many  books,  his  principal 
work  being  his  Cyclopedia  of  American  Horticulture, 
which,  has  just  been  completed.  Other  recent  im 
portant  contributions  to  science  have  been  made  by 
,Vernon  L.  Kellogg,  whose  work  has  dealt  princi 
pally  with  American  insects,  and  whose  recent  book 
on  that  subject  has  been  recognized  as  a  standard 
authority;  by  Charles  Edward  Bessey,  professor  of 
botany  at  the  University  of  Nebraska  since  1884,  a 
pupil  of  Dr.  Asa  Gray  and  the  author  of  a  number  of 
valued  books  upon  the  subject  which  has  been  his 
life  work ;  by  George  Frederick  Barker,  now  emeritus 
professor  of  physics  in  the  University  of  Pennsyl 
vania,  and  the  recipient  of  high  honors  at  home  and 
abroad;  and  by  many  others  whom  it  is  not  necessary 
to  mention  here. 

It  will  be  evident  enough  from  the  foregoing  that 
[American  science  can  boast  no  men  of  commanding 
genius — no  men,  that  is,  to  rank  with  Darwin,  or 
Huxley,  or  Lord  Kelvin,  or  Sir  Isaac  Newton,  to 
mention  only  Englishmen.  Its  record  has  been  one 
of  respectable  achievement  rather  than  of  brilliant 

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Scientists  and  Educators 

originality,  but  is  yet  one  of  which  we  have  no  reason 
to  be  ashamed. 

Most  of  the  men  mentioned  in  this  chapter  have, 
in  the  widest  sense  been  educators.  Agassiz,  Gray, 
Silliman,  Guyot — all  were  educators  in  the  fullest 
and  truest  way.  It  remains  for  us  to  consider  a  few 
others  who  have  labored  in  this  country  for  the 
spread  of  knowledge.  That  the  present  educational 
system  of  the  United  States  is  not  a  spontaneous 
growth,  but  has  been  carefully  fostered  and  directed, 
goes  without  saying.  It  is  the  result,  first,  of  a  wise 
interest  and  support  on  the  part  of  the  state,  which 
early  recognized  the  importance  of  educating  its  citi 
zens,  and,  second,  of  the  self-sacrificing  efforts  of  a 
number  of  intelligent,  earnest,  and  public-spirited 
men. 

One  of  the  first  of  these  was  Horace  Mann,  born  in 
Massachusetts  in  1796,  the  son  of  a  poor  farmer. 
His  struggle  to  gain  an  education  was  a  desperate  one, 
and  its  story  cannot  but  be  inspiring.  As  a  child  he 
earned  his  school  books  by  braiding  straw,  and  his 
utmost  endeavors,  between  the  ages  of  ten  and 
twenty,  could  secure  him  no  more  than  six  weeks' 
schooling  in  any  one  year.  Consequently  he  was 
twenty-three  years  of  age  when  he  graduated  from 
Brown  University,  instead  of  seventeen  or  eighteen, 
as  would  have  been  the  case  had  he  had  the.  usual 
opportunities.  He  went  to  work  at  once  as  a  tutor  in 
Latin  and  Greek,  studied  law,  was  admitted  to  the 
bar,  elected  to  the  state  legislature  and  afterwards 

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to  the  senate,  and  finally  entered  upon  his  real 
work  as  secretary  to  the  Massachusetts  board  of 
education. 

He  introduced  a  thorough  reform  into  the  school 
system  of  the  state,  made  a  trip  of  inspection  through 
European  schools,  and  by  his  lectures  and  writings 
awakened  an  interest  in  the  cause  of  education  which 
had  never  before  been  felt.  His  reports  were  re 
printed  in  other  states,  attaining  the  widest  circula 
tion.  It  is  noteworthy  that  as  early  as  1847,  he  ad 
vocated  the  disuse  of  corporal  punishment  in  school 
discipline.  After  a  service  of  some  years  as  member 
of  Congress,  during  which  he  threw  all  his  influence 
against  slavery,  he  accepted  the  presidency  of  An- 
tioch  College,  at  Yellow  Springs,  Ohio,  where  he  con 
tinued  until  his  death.  It  was  there  that  the  experi 
ment  of  co-education  was  tried,  and  found  to  work 
successfully,  and  the  foundations  laid  for  one  of  the 
most  characteristic  of  recent  great  development  of 
higher  school  education  in  America.  Oberlin  College, 
also  in  Ohio,  had  by  a  few  years  preceded  Dr.  Mann's 
experiment,  but  the  latter's  great  reputation  as  an 
educator  caused  his  ardent  advocacy  of  co-education 
to  carry  great  weight  with  the  public.  From  this 
time  on  it  became  a  custom,  as  state  universities 
opened  in  the  west,  to  admit  women,  and  the  custom 
gradually  spread  to  the  east  and  even  to  some  of  the 
larger  colleges  supported  by  private  endowments. 

Turning  to  the  three  great  universities,  Harvard, 
Yale,  and  Princeton,  which  have  done  so  much  for 
the  intellectual  welfare  of  the  country,  we  find  a 

214 


Scientists  and  Educators 

galaxy  of  brilliant  names.  On  the  list  of  Harvard 
presidents,  three  stand  out  pre-eminent — Josiah 
Quincy,  Edward  Everett,  and  Charles  William  Eliot. 
Josiah  Quincy,  third  of  the  name  of  the  great  Massa 
chusetts  Quincys,  graduated  at  Harvard  in  1790  at 
the  head  of  his  class,  studied  law,  drifted  inevitably 
into  politics,  held  a  number  of  offices,  which  do  not 
concern  us  here,  and  finally,  after  a  remarkable  term 
as  mayor  of  Boston,  was,  in  1829,  chosen  president 
of  Harvard.  The  work  that  he  did  there  was  im 
portant  in  the  extreme.  He  introduced  the  system  of 
marking  which  continued  in  use  for  over  forty  years ; 
instituted  the  elective  system,  which  permitted  the 
student  to  shape  his  course  of  study  to  suit  the  career 
which  he  had  chosen;  secured  large  endowments,  and, 
when  he  retired  from  the  presidency  in  1845,  left  the 
college  in  the  foremost  position  among  American 
institutions  of  learning.  Edward  Everett,  who  was 
president  of  the  college  from  1846-49,  was  more 
prominent  as  a  statesman  than  as  an  educator,  and 
an  outline  of  his  career  will  be  found  in  "Men  of 
Action."  The  third  of  the  trio,  Charles  William 
Eliot,  whose  term  as  president  of  the  college  covered 
a  period  of  forty  years,  is  rightly  regarded  as  one  of 
the  greatest,  if  not  the  greatest  educator  this  country 
has  produced. 

Graduating  from  Harvard  in  1853,  at  the  age  of 
nineteen,  he  devoted  his  attention  principally  to 
chemistry,  and,  after  some  years  of  teaching,  and  of 
study  in  Europe,  was,  in  1865,  appointed  professor 
of  chemistry  in  the  Massachusetts  Institute  of  Tech- 

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nology.  The  same  year,  a  revolution  occurred  in  the  ' 
government  of  Harvard,  which  was  transferred  from 
the  state  legislature  to  the  graduates  of  the  college. 
The  effect  of  the  change  was  greatly  to  strengthen 
the  interest  of  the  alumni  in  the  management  of  the 
university,  and  to  prepare  the  way  for  extensive  and 
thorough  reforms.  Considerable  time  was  spent  in 
searching  for  the  right  man  for  president  and  finally, 
in  1869,  Prof.  Eliot  was  chosen. 

That  the  right  man  had  been  found  was  evident 
from  the  first.  "  King  Log  has  made  room  for  King 
Stork/'  wrote  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes,  then  professor 
of  anatomy  and  physiology  at  Harvard,  to  John  Mot 
ley.  "  Mr.  Eliot  makes  the  corporation  meet  twice 
a  month  instead  of  once.  He  comes  to  the  meeting  of 
every  faculty,  ours  among  the  rest,  and  keeps  us  up 
to  eleven  and  twelve  o'clock  at  night  discussing  new 
arrangements.  I  cannot  help  being  amused  at  some 
of  the  scenes  we  have  in  our  medical  faculty — this 
cool,  grave  young  man  proposing  in  the  calmest  way 
to  turn  everything  topsy  turvy,  taking  the  reins  into 
his  hands  and  driving  as  if  he  were  the  first  man  that 
ever  sat  on  the  box. 

" '  How  is  it,  I  should  like  to  ask/  said  one  of  our 
members,  the  other  day,  i  that  this  faculty  has  gone 
on  for  eighty  years  managing  its  own  affairs  and  do 
ing  it  well,  and  now  within  three  or  four  months  it  is 
proposed  to  change  all  our  modes  of  carrying  on  the 
school  ?  It  seems  very  extraordinary,  and  I  should 
like  to  know  how  it  happens.' 

"  i  I  can  answer  Dr.  's  question  very  easily/ 

216 


ELIOT 


Scientists  and  Educators 

said  the  bland,  grave  young  man.  '  There  is  a  new 
president/ 

"  The  tranquil  assurance  of  this  answer  had  an 
effect  such  as  I  hardly  ever  knew  produced  by  the 
most  eloquent  sentences  I  ever  heard  uttered." 

The  bland  young  man's  innovations  did  not  seem 
to  do  much  harm  to  Harvard,  for  under  his  adminis 
tration,  her  financial  resources  have  been  multiplied 
by  ten,  as  has  the  number  of  her  teachers,  while  the 
number  of  her  students  has  been  multiplied  by  five. 
Dr.  Eliot  has  grown  into  the  real  head  of  the 
educational  system  of  this  country  •  his  influence  has 
wrought  vast  changes  in  every  department  of  teach 
ing,  from  the  kindergarten  to  the  university.  It  was 
his  idea  that  common  school  education  and  college 
education  ought  to  be  flexible,  ought  to  be  made  to  fit 
the  needs  of  the  pupil.  The  result  has  been  the  broad 
development  of  the  elective  system — broader  than  J"o- 
siah  Quincy  ever  dreamed  of.  The  same  system  has 
changed  the  whole  aspect  of  the  teaching  profession, 
resulting  in  the  demand  for  a  competent  training  in 
some  specialty  for  every  teacher. 

Dr.  Eliot,  who  is  in  a  sense  the  first  living  citi 
zen  of  America,  has  not  attained  that  position 
merely  by  success  in  his  profession.  He  has  devoted 
time  and  thought  to  the  great  problems  of  our  govern 
ment,  and  has  taken  an  active  part  in  many  public 
movements — the  race  question,  the  relations  of  capi 
tal  and  labor,  the  movement  for  universal  arbitration. 
He  has  been  honored  by  France,  by  Italy,  and  by 
Japan,  and  resigned  from  his  great  office,  in  1909,  at 

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the  age  of  seventy-five,  with  mental  and  physical 
powers  in  splendid  condition,  not  to  retire  from  active 
life,  but  to  devote  himself  even  more  wholly  to  the 
service  of  his  countrymen.  In  this  age  of  commercial 
domination,  a  career  such  as  Dr.  Eliot's  is  more 
than  usually  inspiring. 

In  the  history  of  the  adminstration  of  Yale  univer 
sity,  the  most  striking  personalities  are  the  two  Tim 
othy  Dwights  and  Xoah  Porter.  The  first  Timothy 
Dwight,  horn  in  1752,  and  graduating  from  Yale  at 
the  age  of  seventeen,  began  to  teach,  and  at  the  out 
break  of  the  Revolution,  enlisted  as  Chaplain  in  Par 
son's  brigade  of  the  Connecticut  line.  It  was  at  this 
time  he  wrote  a  number  of  stirring  patriotic  songs, 
one  of  which,  "  Columbia,"  still  lives.  At  the  close  of 
the  war,  he  continued  preaching  and  also  opened  an 
academy,  at  which  women  were  admitted  to  the  same 
courses  with  men,  and  which  soon  acquired  consid 
erable  reputation.  In  1795,  he  was  called  to  the  presi 
dency  of  Yale,  a  position  which  he  held  until  his 
death.  His  administration  marked  the  beginning  of 
a  new  era  in  the  history  of  the  college.  At  his  acces 
sion,  the  college  had  about  one  hundred  students,  and 
the  instructors  consisted  of  the  president,  one  pro 
fessor  and  three  tutors.  He  established  permanent 
professorships  and  chose  such  men  to  fill  them  as  Jere 
miah  Day,  Benjamin  Silliman,  and  James  Kingsley. 
The  result  of  this  policy  was  a  steady  growth  in  the 
number  of  students,  until,  at  his  death,  they  had  in 
creased  to  over  three  hundred. 

Xoah  Porter,  who  came  to  the  presidency  in  1871, 
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Scientists  and  Educators 

had  been  graduated  from  the  college  forty  years  be 
fore,  during  which  time  he  had  studied  theology,  held 
a  number  of  important  charges,  was  called  to  the 
chair  of  moral  philosophy  at  Yale,  and  finally  elevated 
to  the  presidency.  His  work  was  most  important,  one 
feature  of  it  being  the  introduction  of  elective  stud 
ies,  though  he  insisted  also  upon  a  required  course,  as 
opposed  to  the  Harvard  system.  Some  of  the  Uni 
versity's  finest  buildings  were  erected  during  his  ad 
ministration,  and  at  its  close  the  student  body  num 
bered  nearly  eleven  hundred. 

He  was  succeeded  in  1886  by  Timothy  Dwight, 
grandson  of  the  elder  president  Dwight,  who,  for 
many  years  has  been  closely  associated  with  the  Uni 
versity,  its  financial  growth  being  largely  due  to  his 
efforts.  Under  his  management  the  growth  of  the 
institution  was  unprecedented,  the  number  of  stu 
dents  increasing  nearly  fifty  per  cent  within  five 
years.  He  was  also  prominently  identified  with  the 
general  educational  movement  throughout  the  coun 
try,  and  his  "  True  Ideal  of  an  American  Univer 
sity,"  published  in  1872,  attracted  much  attention. 

Princeton  has  also  had  its  share  of  eminent  men, 
among  them  Jonathan  Edwards,  John  Witherspoon, 
and  James  McCosh.  Jonathan  Edwards  was  one  of 
the  most  remarkable  characters  in  American  history. 
Born  in  1703,  he  was  the  fifth  of  eleven  children  and 
the  only  son.  As  a  mere  child,  he  developed  uncom 
mon  qualities,  entered  Yale  College  at  the  age  of 
twelve  and  graduated  at  the  age  of  seventeen.  His 
father  was  a  clergyman,  and  the  boy  had  been  brought 

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A  Guide  to  Biography 

tip  in  a  household  and  community  intensely  religious, 
so  that  he  very  early  began  to  have  "a  variety  of  con 
cerns  and  exercises  about  his  soul.'7  It  was  inevita 
ble,  of  course,  that  he  should  become  a  minister,  and, 
at  the  age  of  nineteen,  was  ordained  and  began  to 
preach  at  a  small  church  in  New  York  City.  Ed 
wards  seems  to  have  been  afflicted  from  the  first  with 
what  is  in  these  days  irreverently  called  an  in-growing 
conscience,  and  early  formulated  for  himself  a  set 
of  seventy  resolutions  of  the  most  exalted  nature, 
which,  however  praiseworthy  in  themselves,  were  too 
high  and  good  for  human  nature's  daily  food,  and 
must  have  made  him  a  most  uncomfortable  person  to 
live  with.  He  developed,  however,  into  a  powerful 
preacher,  and  his  services  were  much  sought,  espe 
cially  at  revivals.  One  of  his  sermons,  called  "  Sin 
ners  in  the  Hands  of  an  Angry  God,"  is  said  to 
have  created  a  profound  impression  wherever 
delivered. 

A  difference  with  his  congregation  at  Northamp 
ton  caused  him  to  resign  his  pastorate  there,  and,  de 
clining  a  number  of  calls  to  established  parishes,  he 
went  as  a  missionary  to  the  Housatonick  Indians,  at 
so  small  an  income  that  his  wife  and  daughters  were 
forced  to  labor  with  the  needle  to  support  the  family. 
It  was  while  engaged  in  this  work,  that  an  unexpected 
call  came  to  him  to  take  the  presidency  of  Princeton. 
He  accepted  and  was  installed  as  president  early  in 
1758.  At  once  he  began  a  series  of  reforms  in  the 
college,  administration,  but  an  epidemic  of  small-pox 
broke  out  in  the  neighborhood,  and  Edwards,  expos- 

220 


Scientists  and  Educators 

Ing  himself  to  it  fearlessly,  contracted  the  disease  and 
died  thirty-four  days  after  his  installation. 

Jonathan  Edwards  prohably  came  as  near  to  the 
old  idea  of  a  saint  as  America  ever  produced.  Self- 
denying,  stern,  of  an  exalted  piety,  and  intensely  re 
ligious,  he  lived  in  a  world  of  his  own,  and  was  re 
garded  with  no  little  awe  and  trembling.  That  he 
was  a  power  for  good  cannot  be  doubted,  and  his  ser 
mons  are  still  read,  where  those  of  his  contempora 
ries  have  long  since  been  forgotten. 

Much  more  important  to  Princeton,  was  John 
iWitherspoon,  who  came  to  the  presidency  in  1768, 
after  a  distinguished  career  in  Scotland,  one  of  the 
incidents  of  which  was  being  taken  a  prisoner  while 
incautiously  watching  the  battle  of  Falkirk.  He  never 
wholly  recovered  from  the  effects  of  the  imprison 
ment  which  followed.  He  brought  with  him  from 
Scotland  a  valuable  library  which  he  gave  to  the  col 
lege,  and,  finding  the  college  treasury  empty,  he  un 
dertook  a  vigorous  campaign  to  replenish  it,  making 
a  tour  of  isTew  England,  and  even  extending  his  quest 
as  far  as  Jamaica  and  the  West  Indies.  Through  his 
administrative  ability  and  the  changes  and  additions 
which  he  made  in  the  course  of  study,  the  college  re 
ceived  a  great  impetus. 

The  service  to  his  adopted  country  by  which  With- 
erspoon  will  be  longest  remembered,  was  the  course 
he  followed  at  the  beginning  of  the  Eevolution.  From 
the  first,  he  took  the  side  of  the  colonies,  and  by  pre 
cept  and  example,  held  not  only  the  great  body  of 
Presbyterians  true  to  that  cause,  but  also  the  Scotch 

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and  Scotch-Irish,  who  were  naturally  Tories  by  sym 
pathy.  He  was  a  member  of  the  Continental  Con 
gress,  urged  ceaselessly  the  passage  of  the  Declaration 
of  Independence,  was  one  of  its  signers,  and  as  a 
member  of  succeeding  Congresses,  distinguished  him 
self  by  his  services.  After  the  close  of  the  war,  he 
returned  to  Princeton  and  devoted  the  remainder  of 
his  life  to  its  administration. 

Greatest  of  the  three  as  an  educator  was  James  Mc- 
Cosh.  A  Scotchman,  like  Witherspoon,  a  student  of 
the  Universities  of  Glasgow  and  Edinburgh,  a  pupil 
of  Thomas  Chalmers,  he  was  ordained  to  the  ministry 
in  1835,  and  was  a  leading  spirit  in  the  movement 
which  culminated  in  the  establishment  of  the  Free 
Church  of  Scotland.  His  publications  on  philosophi 
cal  subjects  brought  him  the  appointment  as  profes 
sor  of  logic  and  metaphysics  in  Queen's  College,  Bel 
fast,  where  he  remained  for  sixteen  years,  drawing  to 
the  college  a  large  body  of  students,  and  publishing 
other  philosophical  works  of  the  first  importance.  In 
1868,  he  was  chosen  president  of  Princeton,  and  his 
administration,  lasting  for  nearly  a  quarter  of  a  cen 
tury,  was  remarkably  successful.  Under  him,  the 
student  attendance  nearly  doubled,  the  teaching  staff 
was  more  than  doubled,  and  the  resources  of  the  col 
lege  enormously  increased.  During  these  years,  too, 
he  continued  his  philosophical  work,  publishing  a 
series  of  volumes  which  are  the  most  noteworthy  of 
their  kind  ever  produced  in  America. 

The  temptation  is  great  to  dwell  upon  other  educa 
tors  connected  with  the  great  universities :  Ira  Hem- 

222 


Scientists  and  Educators 

sen,  and  his  contributions  to  chemistry ;  David  Starr 
Jordan,  and  his  great  work  on  American  fishes ; 
Woodrow  Wilson,  and  his  contributions  to  the  study 
of  American  history ;  Jacob  Gould  Schurman,  and 
his  work  in  the  field  of  ethics ; — to  mention  only  a 
few  of  them — but  there  is  not  space  to  do  so  here. 
However,  this  chapter  cannot  be  closed  without  some 
reference  to  the  career  of  a  remarkable  woman,  an 
educator  in  the  truest  sense,  whose  influence  for  good 
can  hardly  be  estimated — Jane  Addams. 

John  Burns,  the  English  cabinet  minister  and  la 
bor  leader.,  has  called  her  "  the  only  saint  America 
has  produced."  Her  sainthood  is  of  the  modern  kind, 
which  devotes  itself  by  practical  work  to  the  allevia 
tion  of  suffering  and  the  uplifting  of  humanity,  as 
opposed  to  the  old  fashioned  kind  of  which  we  were 
speaking  a  moment  ago  in  connection  with  Jonathan 
Edwards. 

Graduating  at  Rockford  College,  in  1881,  Miss 
Addams,  then  a  delicate  girl,  spent  two  years  in 
Europe.  The  sight  which  impressed  her  most,  and 
which,  to  a  large  extent,  determined  her  future 
career,  was  that  of  Mile  End  Road,  the  most  crowded 
and  squalid  district  of  London,  where  she  beheld 
a  dirty  and  destitute  mob  quarreling  over  food  unfit 
to  eat.  This  vision  of  squalor  and  sin  never  left 
her,  and  the  result  was  the  establishment,  in  1889,  of 
the  Social  Settlement  of  Hull  House,  in  the  slums  of 
Chicago.  For  Miss  Addams  had  come  to  the  conclu 
sion  that  the  only  way  to  reach  the  destitute  and 
despairing  was  to  dwell  among  them. 

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How  right  she  was  has  been  abundantly  proved  by 
the  splendid  work  Hull  House  has  done.  Its  object, 
as  stated  in  its  charter,  is  "  to  provide  a  center  for  a 
higher  civic  and  social  life ;  to  institute  and  maintain 
educational  and  philanthropic  enterprises,  and  to  in 
vestigate  and  improve  the  conditions  in  the  industrial 
districts  of  Chicago."  All  that  it  has  done,  and 
much  more ;  for  it  has  been  a  beacon  light  of  progress, 
pointing  the  way  for  like  undertakings  elsewhere. 
But  most  valuable  of  all  has  been  Miss  Addams'a 
personal  influence,  the  inspiration  which  her  life  has 
been  to  workers  everywhere  for  social  betterment,  and 
the  message  which,  by  tongue  and  pen,  she  has  given 
to  the  world.  As  an  example  of  a  useful,  devoted  and 
well-rounded  life,  hers  stands  unique  in  America  to 
day. 

SUMMARY 

AUDUBON,  JOHN  JAMES.  Born  near  New  Orleans, 
May  4,  1780;  published  "Birds  of  America/'  1830-39; 
"Ornithological  Biography/'  1831-39;  "Quadrupeds 
of  America/'  1846-54;  died  at  New  York  City,  Janu 
ary  27,  1851. 

AGASSIZ,  JEAN"  Louis  EUDOLPIIE.  Born  at  Motier, 
canton  of  Fribourg,  Switzerland,  May  28,  1807;  pro 
fessor  of  natural  history  at  Neuchatel,  1832;  studied 
Aar  glacier,  1840-41;  came  to  United  States,  1846; 
professor  of  zoology  and  geology  at  Cambridge,  1848; 
curator  of  Cambridge  Museum  of  Comparative  Zoology, 
1859;  travelled  in  Brazil,  1865-66;  around  Cape  Horn, 
1871-72;  died  at  Cambridge,,  Massachusetts,  December 
14,  1873. 

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Scientists  and  Educators 

AGASSIZ,  ALEXANDER.  Born  at  Neuchatel,  Switzer 
land,  December  17,  1835;  came  to  United  States,  1849; 
graduated  at  Harvard,  1855;  developed  Lake  Superior 
copper  mines,  1865-69 ;  curator  of  Cambridge  Museum 
of  Comparative  Zoology,  1874-85;  died  at  sea,  March 
29,  1910. 

GRAY,  ASA.  Born  at  Paris,  Oneida  County,  New 
York,  November  18,  1810;  professor  of  natural  history 
at  Harvard,  1842-88;  died  at  Cambridge,  Massachu 
setts,  January  30,  1888. 

TORRE  Y,  JOHN.  Born  at  New  York  City,  August  15, 
1796;  professor  at  Princeton  and  in  College  of  Physi 
cians  and  Surgeons,  New  York;  State  Geologist  of  New 
York ;  United  States  assayer ;  died  at  New  York,  March 
10,  1873. 

DRAPER,  JOHN  WILLIAM.  Born  at  St.  Helena,  near 
Liverpool,  England,  May  5,  1811;  came  to  America, 
1832;  professor  of  chemistry  University  of  New  York, 
1839;  president  of  the  Medical  College,  1850-73;  died 
at  Hastings-on-the-Hudson,  New  York,  January  4, 
1882. 

RUTHERFORD,  LEWIS  MORRIS.  Born  at  Morrisania, 
New  York,  November  25,  1816;  graduated  at  Williams 
College,  1834;  admitted  to  bar,  1839;  abandoned  law  to 
devote  himself  to  study  of  physics,  1849;  died  at  Tran 
quillity,  New  Jersey,  May  30,  1892. 

YOUNG,  CHARLES  AUGUSTUS.  Born  at  Hanover,  New 
Hampshire,  December  15,  1834;  graduated  at  Dart 
mouth,  1858;  professor  of  astronomy  at  Princeton, 
1877-1905;  died  at  Hanover,  New  Hampshire,  Janu 
ary  4,  1908. 

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LANGLEY,  SAMUEL  PIERPOXT.  Born  at  Boxbury, 
Boston,  August  22,  1834;  secretary  Smithsonian  Insti 
tution,  1887-1908. 

NEWCOMB,  SIMON.  Born  at  Wallace,  Nova  Scotia, 
March  12,  1835;  came  to  United  States,  1853;  gradu 
ated  Lawrence  Scientific  School,  1858;  professor  of 
Mathematics,  II.  S.  navy,  1861;  director  Nautical  Al 
manac  office,  1877-97;  professor  mathematics  and 
astronomy  Johns  Hopkins  University,  1884-94;  died 
at  Washington,  July  11,  1909. 

PICKERING,  EDWARD  CHARLES.  Born  at  Boston,  July 
19,  1846;  graduated  Lawrence  Scientific  School,  1865; 
professor  of  astronomy  and  director  of  Harvard  Ob 
servatory  since  1877. 

MARSH,  OTHNIEL  CHARLES.  Born  at  Lockport,  New 
York,  October  29,  1831;  professor  paleontology  Yale 
University,  1866,  to  death  at  New  Haven,  March  18, 
1899. 

COPE,  EDWARD  DRINKER.  Born  at  Philadelphia, 
July  28,  1840 ;  professor  of  natural  sciences,  Haverford 
College,  1864-67;  paleontologist  to  United  States  Geo 
logical  Survey,  1868  to  death  at  Philadelphia,  April 
12,  1897. 

SILLIMAN,  BENJAMIN.  Born  at  North  Stratford, 
Connecticut,  August  8,  1779;  graduated  at  Yale,  1796; 
tutor  there,  1799,  and  professor,  1802;  professor  emeri 
tus,  1853;  died  at  New  Haven,  Connecticut,  November 
24,  1864. 

DANA,  JAMES  DWIGHT.  Born  at  Utica,  New  York, 
February  12,  1813;  graduated  at  Yale,  1833;  assistant 

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Scientists  and  Educators 

to  Professor  Silliman,  1836-38;  professor  of  geology 
and  natural  history,  1850-64;  died  at  New  Haven, 
April  14,  1895. 

NEWBERRY,  JOHN  STRONG.  Born  at  Windsor,  Con 
necticut,  December  22,  1822;  professor  of  geology  at 
school  of  mines,  Columbia  College,  1866-90;  state 
geologist  of  Ohio,  1869;  died  at  New  Haven,  Connect 
icut,  December  7,  1892. 

WHITNEY,  JOSIAH  DWIGHT.  Born  at  Northampton, 
Massachusetts,  November  23,  1819;  graduated  at  Yale> 
1839 ;  geologist  with  New  Hampshire  survey,  1840-42 ; 
Lake  Superior,  1847—49;  state  chemist  of  Iowa,  1855; 
state  geologist  of  California,  1860-74;  professor  of 
geology  at  Harvard,  1865  to  death  at  Lake  Sunapee, 
New  Hampshire,  August  18,  1896. 

HITCHCOCK,  EDWARD.  Born  at  Deerfield,  Massachu 
setts,  May  24,  1793;  professor  of  chemistry,  Amherst 
College,  1825;  president  of  the  college,  1845-54;  died 
at  Amherst,  Massachusetts,  February  27,  1864. 

MOTT,  VALENTINE.  Born  at  Glen  Cove,  Long  Island, 
August  20,  1785;  graduated  Columbia  College,  1806; 
professor  of  surgery  at  Columbia,  1810-35;  died  at 
New  York  City,  April  26,  1865. 

LONG,  CRAWFORD  W.    Born  at  Danielsville,  Georgia^ 
November  1,  1815 ;  graduated  medical  department  Uni 
versity  of  Penns}dvania,  1839 ;  died  at  Athens,  Georgia, 
;  June  16,  1878. 

MORTON,  WILLIAM  THOMAS  GREEN.  Born  at  Charl- 
ton,  Massachusetts,  August  19,  1819;  practised  den 
tistry  at  Boston,  1841-58;  discovered  anaesthetic  prop- 

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A  Guide  to  Biography 

-erties  of  ether,  1864;  died  in  New  York  City,  July  15, 
1868. 

HENRY,  JOSEPH.  Born  at  Albany,  New  York,  De 
cember  17,  1797;  professor  of  natural  philosophy  at 
Princeton*  1832-46;  first  secretary  of  Smithsonian  In* 
stitution,  1846;  died  at  Washington,  May  13,  1878. 

GUYOT,  ARNOLD  HENRY.  Born  near  Neuchatel, 
Switzerland,  September  28,  1807;  came  to  America, 
1847;  professor  of  physical  geography  and  geology  at 
Princeton,  1855;  died  at  Princeton,  February  8,  1884. 

LE  CONTE,  JOHN.  Born  in  Liberty  County,  Georgia, 
December  4,  1818;  professor  of  physics  University  of 
California,  1869,  to  death  at  Berkeley,  California,  April 
29,  1891. 

LE  CONTE,  JOSEPH.  Born  in  Liberty  County,  Georgia, 
February  26,  1823 ;  professor  of  geology,  University  of 
California,  1869;  died  in  Yosemite  Valley,  California, 
July  6,  1901. 

LE  CONTE,  JOHN  LAWRENCE.  Born  at  New  York 
City,  May  13,  1825 ;  surgeon  of  volunteers  during  Civil 
War,  and  chief  clerk  of  mint  at  Philadelphia  from  1878 
until  his  death  there,  November  15,  1883. 

SHALER,  NATHANIEL  SOUTHGATE.  Born  at  Newport, 
Kentucky,  February  22,  1841 ;  graduated  Lawrence  Sci 
entific  School,  1862;  professor  paleontology  at  Harvard, 
1868-87;  professor  of  geology,  1887,  to  death,  April  11, 
1906. 

MANN,  HORACE.  Born  at  Franklin,  Massachusetts, 
May  7,  1796;  admitted  to  the  bar,  1823;  secretary  of 
Massachusetts  Board  of  Education,  1837-48;  member 

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Scientists  and  Educators 

of  Congress,   1848-53;  president  of  Antioch  College,. 
1852-59 ;  died  at  Yellow  Springs,  Ohio,  August  2,  1859. 

QUINCY,  JOSIAH,  Born  at  Boston,  February  4,  1772 ;. 
member  of  Congress,  1805-13;  mayor  of  Boston,  1823- 
28;  president  of  Harvard,  1829-45;  died  at  Quincy, 
Massachusetts,  July  1,  1864. 

ELIOT,  CHARLES  WILLIAM.  Born  at  Boston,  March 
20,  1834;  graduated  from  Harvard,  1853;  taught 
mathematics  and  chemistry  in  Lawrence  Scientific 
School,  1858-69;  president  of  Harvard,  1869-1909. 

DWIGIIT,  TIMOTHY.  Born  at  Northampton,  Massa 
chusetts,  May  14,  1752;  graduated  from  Yale,  1769; 
president  of  Yale,  1795-1817;  died  at  New  Haven, 
Connecticut,  January  11,  1817. 

PORTER,  NOAH.  Born  at  Farmington,  Connecticut,. 
December  14,  1811;  graduated  at  Yale,  1831;  tutor  at 
Yale,  1833-35;  pastor  of  Congregational  churches  at 
New  Milford,  Connecticut,  and  Springfield,  Massachu 
setts,  1836-46;  professor  of  metaphysics  at  Yale,  1846- 
71;  president  of  Yale,  1871-86;  died  at  New  Haven, 
March  4,  1892. 

DWIGHT,  TIMOTHY.  Born  at  Norwich,  Connecticut, 
November  16,  1828;  graduated  at  Yale,  1849;  studied 
divinity,  1851-55 ;  professor  of  sacred  literature,  1858 ; 
president  of  Yale,  1886-98. 

EDWARDS,  JONATHAN.  Born  at  East  Windsor,  Con 
necticut,  October  5,  1703;  pastor  of  Congregational 
Church,  Northampton,  Massachusetts,  1727-50;  mis 
sionary  to  the  Indians,  1751-58;  president  of  Princeton 
College,  1758;  died  at  Princeton,  March  22,  1758. 

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TViTHERSPOON,  JOHN.  Born  in  Haddingtonshire, 
Scotland,  February  5,  1722;  president  of  Princeton, 
1768;  delegate  to  Continental  Congress,  1774-75;  died 
near  Princeton,  September  15,  1794. 

McCosn,  JAMES.  Born  at  Carskeoch,  Ayrshire, 
Scotland,  April  1,  1811;  president  of  Princeton,  1868- 
88;  died  at  Princeton,  November  16,  1894. 

ADDAMS,  JANE.  Born  at  Cedarville,  Illinois,  1860; 
graduated  Eockford  College,  1881 ;  opened  Hull  House, 
1889. 


230 


CHAPTER   VIII 

PHILANTHROPISTS  AND  REFORMERS 

r  1 1  HIS  has  been  a  country  celebrated  for  its  great 
•"•  fortunes,  and  the  makers  of  some  of  those  for 
tunes  will  be  considered  in  the  chapter  dealing  with 
"  men  of  affairs  ";  but  many  who  have  been  grouped 
under  that  heading  might  well  have  been  included 
under  this,  since,  for  the  most  part,  the  richest  men 
have  been  the  freest  in  their  benefactions.  It  i& 
worth  noting  that  the  recorded  public  gifts  in  thi& 
country  during  1909  amounted  to  $135,000,000. 
The  giving  of  money  is,  of  course,  only  one  kind  of 
benefaction,  and  not  the  highest  kind,  which  is  the 
giving  of  self;  but  the  good  which  these  gifts  have 
rendered  possible  is  beyond  calculation. 

This  kind  of  philanthropy  is  no  new  thing  in  the 
United  States.  It  is  almost  as  old  as  the  country  it 
self.  Indeed,  few  of  the  older  institutions  of  learn 
ing  but  had  their  origin  in  some  such  gift.  One  of  the 
earliest  of  such  philanthropists  was  Stephen  Girard, 
whose  life-story  is  unusually  interesting  and  inspir 
ing.  The  son  of  a  sailor,  and  with  little  opportunity 
for  gaining  an  education,  he  shipped  as  cabin-boy  r 
while  still  a  mere  child,  and  after  some  years  of  rough 
knocking  around,  rose  to  the  position  of  mate,  and 

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finally  to  a  part  ownership  in  the  vessel.  In  1769,  at 
the  age  of  nineteen,  he  established  himself  in  the  ship 
business  in  Philadelphia,  but  the  opening  of  the  Rev 
olution  put  an  end  to  that  business.  Not  until  the 
close  of  the  war  was  he  able  to  re-embark  in  it.  The 
foundation  of  his  fortune  was  soon  laid  by  his  integ 
rity  and  enterprise,  but  it  was  largely  augmented  in 
a  most  peculiar  manner. 

Two  of  his  vessels  happened  to  be  in  one  of  the 
ports  of  Ilayti,  when  a  slave  insurrection  broke  out 
there,  and  a  number  of  the  planters  hastily  removed 
their  treasure  to  his  vessels  for  safe-keeping.  That 
night,  the  insurrection  reached  its  height,  and  the 
planters,  together  with  their  families,  were  massa 
cred.  Heirs  to  a  portion  of  the  treasure  were  discov 
ered  by  Mr.  Girard,  but  he  found  himself  possessed 
of  about  $50,000  to  which  no  heirs  could  be 
traced. 

With  remarkable  foresight,  Mr.  Girard  invested 
largely  in  the  shares  of  the  old  Bank  of  the  United 
States,  and  in  1812,  purchased  its  building  and  suc 
ceeded  to  much  of  its  business.  He  was  the  financial 
mainstay  of  the  government  during  the  second  war 
with  England — in  fact,  it  was  he  who  made  the  finan 
cing  of  the  war  possible.  And  yet  he  was,  to  all  out 
ward  appearances,  a  singularly  repulsive  and  hard- 
fisted  old  miser.  In  early  youth,  an  unfortunate  ac 
cident  had  caused  the  loss  of  one  eye,  and  his  other 
gradually  failed  him  until  he  was  quite  blind ;  he  was 
also  partially  deaf,  and  was  sour,  crabbed  and  un- 
.approachable.  In  small  matters  he  wras  a  miser,  ready 

232 


GIRARD 


Philanthropists  and  Reformers 

to  avoid  paying  a  just  claim  if  he  could  in  any  way  do 
sor  living  in  a  miserable  fashion  and  refusing  charity 
to  every  one,  no  matter  how  deserving.  He  was  for 
bidding  in  appearance,  and  drove  daily  to  and  from 
his  farm  outside  of  Philadelphia  in  a  shabby  old 
carriage  drawn  by  a  single  horse.  ~No  visitor  was  ever 
welcomed  at  that  farm,  where  its  owner  dragged  out 
a  penurious  existence. 

Yet  in  public  matters  no  one  could  have  been  more 
open-handed,  and  when,  after  his  death  in  1831,  his 
will  was  opened,  it  created  a  shock  of  surprise,  for 
practically  his  whole  fortune  of  $9,000,000  had  been 
bequeathed  for  charitable  purposes.  Large  sums  were 
given  to  provide  fuel  for  the  poor  in  winter,  for  dis 
tressed  ship-masters,  for  the  blind,  the  deaf  and  dumb, 
and  for  the  public  schools.  Half  a  million  was  given 
Philadelphia  for  the  improvement  of  her  streets  and 
public  buildings;  but  his  principal  bequest  was  one 
of  $2,000,000,  besides  real  estate,  and  the  residue  of 
his  property,  for  the  establishment  at  Philadelphia  of 
a  college  for  orphans.  In  1848,  Girard  College  was 
opened,  and  has  since  then  continued  its  great  work, 
educating  as  many  orphans  as  the  endowment  can 
support.  So  Girard  atoned  after  his  death,  for  the 
mistakes  of  his  life. 

Almost  equally  singular  was  the  life  of  the  founder 
of  that  splendid  government  enterprise,  the  Smithson 
ian  Institution — perhaps  the  most  important  scien 
tific  center  in  the  world.  James  Smithson  was  in  no 
sense  an  American.  Indeed,  so  far  as  known,  he  never 
even  visited  the  United  States,  and  yet  no  account  of 

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A  Guide  to  Biography 

American  philanthropy  would  be  complete  without 
him.  He  was  born  in  France  in  1765,  and  was  the 
illegitimate  son  of  Hugh  Smithson,  afterwards  Duke 
of  Northumberland.  He  went  by  his  mother's  name 
for  the  first  forty  years  of  his  life,  being  known  as 
James  Macie,  until,  in  1802,  he  assumed  his  father's 
name. 

Born  under  this  shadow,  the  boy  soon  developed 
unusual  qualities,  graduated  from  Oxford,  with  high 
honors  in  chemistry  and  mineralogy,  and  added 
greatly  to  his  reputation  by  a  series  of  scientific  papers 
of  great  importance.  A  large  portion  of  his  life  was 
passed  in  Europe,  where  he  associated  with  the  great 
est  scientists  of  the  day,  honored  by  all  of  them.  He 
died  at  Genoa  at  the  age  of  sixty-four,  and,  when  his 
will  was  opened,  it  was  seen  how  the  circumstances  of 
his  birth  had  weighed  upon  him.  For,  "  in  order  that 
his  name  might  live  in  the  memory  of  man  when  the 
titles  of  the  Northumberlands  are  extinct  and  forgot 
ten,"  he  bequeathed  his  whole  fortune  "  to  the  United 
States  of  America,  to  found  at  Washington,  under  the 
name  of  the  Smithsonian  Institution,  an  establish 
ment  for  the  increase  and  diffusion  of  knowledge 
among  men."  After  a  suit  in  chancery,  the  bequest 
was  paid  over  to  the  United  States  government, 
amounting  to  over  half  a  million  dollars.  In  1846, 
the  Smithsonian  Institution  was  formally  established, 
its  first  secretary  being  Joseph  Henry,  of  whose  great 
work  there  we  have  already  spoken.  It  has  increased 
in  scope  and  usefulness  year  by  year,  and  stands  to 
day  without  a  counterpart  in  any  country. 

234 


Philanthropists  and  Reformers 

Peter  Cooper  also  left  a  portion  of  his  wealth  for 
"  the  diffusion  of  knowledge  among  men,'7  but  a  dif 
ferent  sort  of  knowledge — the  knowledge  that  would 
help  a  man  or  woman  to  earn  a  living.  His  own  ca 
reer  had  shown  him  how  necessary  such  knowledge  is. 
His  father  was  a  hatter  by  trade,  and  the  boy's  earli 
est  recollection  was  of  his  being  employed  to  pull  hair 
out  of  rabbit-skins,  his  head  just  reaching  above  the 
table.  But  the  hat  business  was  unprofitable,  and  the 
elder  Cooper  tried  a  number  of  businesses,  brewing, 
brick-making,  what  not,  the  boy  being  required  to 
take  part  in  each  of  them,  so  that  he  had  no  time  for 
schooling,  and  had  to  pick  up  such  odds  and  ends 
of  knowledge  as  he  could.  Finally,  in  1808,  at  the 
age  of  seventeen,  he  was  apprenticed  to  a  carriage- 
maker,  and  remained  with  him  until  he  was  of  age. 

After  that,  the  young  man  himself  tried  various 
occupations  without  great  success,  until  the  establish 
ment  of  a  glue  factory  began  to  bring  him  large  re 
turns.  By  the  beginning  of  1828,  he  was  able  to  pur 
chase  three  thousand  acres  of  land  within  the  city  of 
Baltimore  and  to  establish  the  Canton  iron-works, 
which  was  the  first  of  his  great  enterprises  tending  to 
ward  the  development  of  the  iron  industry  in  the 
United  States.  Other  plants  were  built  or  purchased, 
rolling  mills  and  blast  furnaces  established,  and  a 
great  impetus  given  to  this  branch  of  manufacture. 
He  practically  financed  the  Atlantic  Cable  Company, 
in  the  face  of  ridicule,  and  made  the  cable  possible, 
and  he  saved  the  Baltimore  &  Ohio  Railroad  from 
bankruptcy  by  designing  and  building  a  locomotive 

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A  Guide  fco  Biography 

- — the  first  ever  built  in  this  country — especially 
adapted  to  the  uneven  country  over  which  the  track 
was  laid. 

The  fortune  thus  acquired  he  devoted  to  a  well- 
considered  and  practical  plan  of  philanthropy.  His 
career  had  shown  him  the  great  value  of  a  trade  fto 
any  man  or  woman.  The  schools  taught  every  kind 
of  knowledge  except  that  which  would  enable  a  man 
to  earn  a  living  with  his  hands,  which  seemed  to  him 
the  most  important  of  all.  He  determined  to  do  what 
he  could  remedy  this  defect,  and  in  1854,  secured 
a  block  of  land  in  New  York  City,  at  the  junction  of 
Third  and  Fourth  Avenues,  where,  shortly  after 
wards,  the  cornerstone  was  laid  of  "  The  Cooper 
Union  for  the  Advancement  of  Science  and  Art."  It 
was  completed  five  years  later,  and  handed  over  to  six 
trustees ;  a  scheme  of  education  was  devised  and  spe 
cial  emphasis  was  laid  upon  "  instruction  in  branches 
of  knowledge  by  which  men  and  women  earn  their 
daily  bread ;  in  laws  of  health  and  improvement  of 
the  .sanitary  condition  of  families  as  well  as  individ 
uals  ;  in  social  and  political  science,  whereby  communi 
ties  and  nations  advance  in  virtue,  wealth  and  power ; 
and  finally  in  matters  which  affect  the  eye,  the  ear, 
and  the  imagination,  and  furnish  a  basis  for  recrea 
tion  to  the  working  classes."  Free  courses  of  lectures 
were  established,  a  free  reading  room,  and  free  in 
struction  was  given  in  various  branches  of  the  useful 
arts.  From  that  day  to  this,  Cooper  Union  has  been 
an  ever-growing  force  for  progress  in  the  life  of  the 
great  city;  it  has  been  a  pioneer  in  the  work  of  indus- 

236 


Philanthropists  and  Keformers 

trial  education,  which  has,  of  recent  years,  reached 
such  great  proportions. 

Peter  Cooper  lived  to  see  the  institution  which  he 
had  founded  realize  at  least  some  of  his  hopes  for  it. 
He  himself  lived  a  most  active  life,  taking  a  promi 
nent  part  in  many  movements  looking  to  the  reform  of 
national  or  civic  ahuses.  In  1876,  he  was  nominated 
by  the  national  independent  party  as  their  candidate 
for  president  and  received  nearly  a  hundred  thousand 
votes.  Since  his  death,  the  institution  which  he 
founded  has  grown  steadily  in  importance ;  other  he- 
quests  have  heen  added  to  his,  and  Cooper  Union  has 
come  to  stand,  in  a  way,  for  civic  righteousness. 

The  year  1795  saw,  the  hirth  of  two  children  who 
were  destined  to  do  a  great  work  for  their  country — 
George  Peahody  and  Johns  Hopkins.  Both  were  the 
sons  of  poor  parents,  with  little  opportunity  for 
achieving  the  sort  of  learning  which  is  taught  in 
schools ;  hut  both,  by  hard  experience  with  the  world, 
gained  another  sort  of  learning  which  is  often  of 
more  practical  value.  At  the  age  of  eleven,  George 
Peabody  was  forced  to  begin  to  earn  his  own  living, 
and  a  place  was  found  for  him  in  a  grocery  store. 
His  habits  were  good,  he  did  his  work  well>  and  final 
ly,  at  the  age  of  nineteen,  was  offered  a  partnership 
by  another  merchant,  who  had  noticed  and  admired 
his  energy  and  enthusiasm.  The  business  increased, 
branch  houses  were  established,  and  at  the  age  of 
thirty-five,  George  Peabody  found  himself  at  the  head 
of  a  great  business,  his  elder  partner  having  retired. 
He  decided  tq  make  London  his  place  of  residence, 

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A  Guide  to  Biography 

and  became  a  sort  of  guardian  angel  for  Americans 
visiting  the  great  English  capital.  He  had  never  mar 
ried,  and  it  seemed  almost  as  if  the  whole  world  were 
his  family.  His  constant  thought  was  of  how  he  could 
elevate  humanity,  and  he  was  not  long  in  putting 
some  of  his  plans  into  effect. 

In  1852,  his  native  town  of  Danvers,  Massachu 
setts,  celebrated  her  centennial,  and  her  most  distin 
guished  citizen  was,  of  course,  invited  to  be  present. 
He  was  too  busy  to  attend,  but  sent  a  sealed  envelope 
to  be  opened  on  the  day  of  the  celebration.  The  seal 
was  broken  at  the  dinner  with  which  the  celebration 
closed,  and  the  envelope  was  found  to  contain  two 
slips  of  paper.  On  one  was  written  this  toast,  "  Edu 
cation — a  debt  due  from  present  to  future  genera 
tions."  The  other  was  a  check  for  twenty  thousand 
dollars,  afterwards  increased  to  two  hundred  and 
fifty  thousand,  for  the  purpose  of  founding  an  Insti 
tute,  with  a  free  library  and  free  course  of  lectures. 
Eour  years  later,  the  Peabody  Institute  was  dedi 
cated,  its  founder  being  in  attendance.  Soon  after 
wards,  he  decided  to  build  a  similar  Institute  at  Bal 
timore,  only  on  a  more  elaborate  scale,  as  befitting 
the  greater  city,  and  gave  a  million  dollars  for  the 
purpose.  It  was  opened  in  1869,  twenty  thousand 
school  children  gathering  to  meet  the  donor  and 
forming  a  guard  of  honor  for  him. 

Two  other  great  gifts  marked  his  life — the  sum  of 
three  million  dollars  for  the  erection  of  model  tene 
ments  for  the  London  poor,  and  a  like  sum  for  the 
education  of  the  American  negro.  When,  in  1869 

238 


Philanthropists  and  Reformers 

the  end  came  in  London,  a  great  funeral  was  held  at 
Westminster  Abbey,  and  the  Queen  of  England  sent 
her  noblest  man-of-war  to  bear  in  state  across  the  At 
lantic  the  body  of  "  her  friend,"  the  poor  boy  of 
Danvers. 

It  is  a  strange  coincidence  that  Baltimore,  which 
had  profited  so  greatly  from  George  Peabody's  phi 
lanthropy,  should  also  be  the  object  of  that  of  Johns 
Hopkins.  The  latter  was  of  Quaker  stock,  was  raised 
on  a  farm,  and  at  the  age  of  seventeen  became  a  clerk 
in  his  uncle's  grocery  store  at  Baltimore.  He  soon 
accumulated  enough  capital  to  go  into  business  for 
himself,  first  as  a  grocer,  then  as  a  banker,  and  fi 
nally  as  one  of  the  backers  of  the  Baltimore  &  Ohio 
Railway.  In  1873,  he  gave  property  valued  at  four 
and  a  half  millions  to  found  in  the  city  of  Baltimore 
a  hospital,  which,  by  its  charter,  is  free  to  all,  re 
gardless  of  race  or  color;  and  three  and  a  half 
millions  for  the  endowment  of  Johns  Hopkins  Uni 
versity,  which,  opened  in  1876,  has  grown  to  be  one 
of  the  most  famous  schools  of  law,  medicine  and 
science  in  the  country. 

Another  Quaker,  Ezra  Cornell,  is  also  associated 
with  the  name  of  a  great  university.  Reared  among 
the  hills  of  western  New  York,  helping  his  father  on 
his  farm  and  in  his  little  pottery,  the  boy  soon  devel 
oped  considerable  mechanical  genius,  and  at  the  age 
of  seventeen,  with  the  help  of  only  a  younger  brother, 
he  built  a  new  home  for  the  family,  a  two-story  frame 
dwelling,  the  largest  and  best  in  the  neighborhood. 
He  soon  struck  out  into  the  world,  engaged  in  busi- 

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nesses  of  various  kinds  with  varying  success,  but  It' 
was  not  until  he  was  thirty-six  years  old  that  he  found 
his  vocation. 

It  was  at  that  time  he  "became  associated  with  S.  F. 
B.  Morse,  who  engaged  him  to  superintend  the  erec 
tion  of  the  first  line  of  telegraph  between  Washington 
and  Baltimore.  Thereafter  he  devoted  himself  en 
tirely  to  the  development  of  the  new  invention;  suc 
ceeded,  after  many  rebuffs  and  disappointments,  in 
organizing  a  company  to  erect  a  line  from  New  York 
to  Washington,  and  superintended  its  construction. 
It  was  the  first  of  many,  afterwards  consolidated  into 
the  Western  Union  Telegraph  Company,  which,  for 
many  years,  held  a  monopoly  of  the  telegraph  busi 
ness  of  the  country,  and  which  made  Ezra  Cornell  a 
millionaire.  He  himself  was  well  advanced  in  years, 
and  finally  retired  from  active  life,  buying  a  great 
estate  near  Ithaca,  I^ew  York,  where  he  lived  quietly, 
devising  a  method  for  the  best  disposition  of  his  great 
fortune. 

He  at  last  decided  to  found  an  institution  "  where 
any  person  can  find  instruction  in  any  study."  Work 
was  begun  at  once,  and  in  1868,  Cornell  College  was 
formally  opened,  over  four  hundred  students  en 
tering  the  first  year.  The  founder's  gifts  to  this  in 
stitution  aggregated  over  three  millions.  Many  other 
bequests  followed,  which  have  made  Cornell  one  of 
the  most  liberally-endowed  colleges  in  the  country. 
Froude,  the  great  English  historian,  visited  it  on  one 
occasion,  and  afterwards  said : 

"  There  is  something  I  admire  even  more  than  the 
240 


Philanthropists  and  Reformers 

university,  and  that  is  the  quiet,  unpretending  man 
by  whom  it  was  founded.  We  have  had  such  men  in 
old  times,  and  there  are  men  in  England  who  make 
great  fortunes  and  who  make  claim  to  great  munifi 
cence;  but  who  manifest  their  greatness  in  buying 
great  estates  and  building  castles  for  the  founding 
of  peerages  to  be  handed  down  from  father  to  son. 
Mr.  Cornell  has  sought  for  immortality,  and  the  per 
petuity  of  his  name  among  the  people  of  a  free  na 
tion.  There  stands  his  great  university,  built  upon 
a  rock,  to  endure  while  the  American  nation  en 
dures." 

The  next  great  benefaction  we  have  to  record  is, 
in  some  respects,  unique.  John  Fox  Slater  was  born 
in  Slatersville,  Rhode  Island,  in  1815.  He  was  the 
son  of  Samuel  Slater,  proprietor  of  the  greatest  cot 
ton-mills  in  New  England,  and  he  naturally  suc 
ceeded  to  the  business  upon  his  father's  death.  The 
business  prospered,  receiving  a  great  impetus  from 
the  invention  of  the  cotton-gin,  and  Slater's  wealth 
increased  rapidly. 

He  had,  on  more  than  one  occasion,  visited  the 
south  and  seen  the  negroes  at  work  in  the  cotton  fields. 
As  time  went  on,  the  idea  grew  in  his  mind  that  he 
should  do  something  for  these  poor  laborers  to  wThom? 
indirectly,  his  own  fortune  was  due,  and  in  1882,  he 
set  aside  the  sum  of  one  million  dollars  for  the  pur 
pose  of  "  uplifting  the  lately  emancipated  population 
of  the  Southern  States,  and  their  posterity."  For 
this  gift  he  received  the  thanks  of  Congress.  No  part 
of  the  gift  is  spent  for  grounds  or  buildings,  but  the 

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whole  income  is  spent  in  assisting  negroes  in  indus 
trial  education  and  in  preparing  them  to  be  the  teach 
ers  of  their  own  race.  By  the  extraordinary  ability  of 
the  fund's  treasurer,  it  has  been  increased  to  a  million 
and  a  half,  although  half  a  million  has  been  expended 
along  the  lines  contemplated  by  the  donor.  This, 
with  the  Peabody  fund,  comprises  a  powerful  agency 
in  working  out  the  difficult  problem  of  negro  educa 
tion. 

The  fortunes  of  such  men  as  Peabody  and  Cornell 
and  Hopkins  and  Peter  Cooper  seem  small  enough 
to-day  when  compared  with  the  gigantic  aggregations 
of  money  which  a  few  men  have  succeeded  in  piling 
up.  Not  all  of  them,  by  any  means,  devote  their 
wealth  to  philanthropy.  Here,  as  in  England,  there 
are  men  concerned  only  with  the  idea  of  building  up 
a  family  and  a  great  estate ;  but  there  are  a  few  who 
have  labored  as  faithfully  to  use  their  wealth  wisely 
as  they  did  to  accumulate  it. 

First  of  them  is  Leland  Stanford,  born  in  the  val 
ley  of  the  Mohawk,  studying  law,  and  moving  to 
Wisconsin  to  practise  it,  but  losing  his  law  library 
and  all  his  property  by  fire,  and  finally  joining  the 
rush  to  the  newly-discovered  California  gold-fields, 
where  he  arrived  in  1852,  being  at  that  time  twenty- 
eight  years  old.  After  some  experience  in  the  mines, 
he  decided  that  there  were  surer  ways  of  getting  gold 
than  digging  for  it,  and  set  up  a  mercantile  business 
in  San  Francisco,  which  grew  rapidly  in  importance 
and  proved  the  foundation  of  a  vast  fortune.  He  was 

242 


Philanthropists  and  Kefonners 

the  first  president  of  the  Central  Pacific  Kailroad, 
and  was  in  charge  of  its  construction  over  the  moun 
tains,  driving  the  last  spike  at  Promontory  Point, 
Utah,  on  the  tenth  of  May,  1869.  He  was  prominent 
in  the  politics  of  state  and  nation,  being  elected  to  the 
United  States  Senate  in  1885. 

It  is  not  by  his  public  life,  however,  that  he  will 
be  remembered,  for  he  did  nothing  there  that  was  in 
any  way  memorable,  but  by  his  gift  of  twenty  million 
dollars  to  found  a  great  university  at  Palo  Alto,  Cali 
fornia,  in  memory  of  his  only  son.  On  May  14,  1887, 
the  cornerstone  of  this  great  institution  was  laid,  and 
the  university  was  formally  opened  in  1891.  The 
idea  of  its  founder  was  that  it  should  teach  not  only 
the  studies  usually  taught  in  college,  but  also  other 
practical  branches  of  education,  such  as  telegraphy, 
type-setting,  type-writing,  book-keeping,  and  farm 
ing.  This  it  has  done,  and  so  rapid  has  been  it* 
growth,  that  it  now  has  over  seventeen  hundred  stu 
dents  enrolled. 

After  Senator  Stanford's  death  in  1893,  the  uni 
versity  was  further  endowed  by  his  widow,  Jane  La- 
throp  Stanford,  so  that  the  present  productive  funds 
of  the  university,  after  all  of  the  buildings  have  been 
paid  for,  amount  to  nearly  twenty-five  million  dol 
lars. 

The  second  of  the  great  givers  of  recent  years  is 
John  Davison  Eockefeller,  whose  name  is  synony 
mous  with  the  greatest  natural  monopoly  of  modern 
times,  the  Standard  Oil  Company.  His  rise  from 
clerk  in  a  grocery  store  to  one  of  the  greatest  capital- 

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A  Guide  to  Biography 

Ists  in  the  history  of  the  world  is  an  interesting  one, 
-as  well  as  an  important  one  in  the  commercial  history 
of  America.  Born  at  Richford,  New  York,  in  1839, 
his  parents  moved  to  Cleveland,  Ohio,  when  he  was  a 
boy  of  fourteen,  and  such  education  as  he  had  was 
secured  in  the  Cleveland  public  schools.  He  soon 
left  school  for  business,  getting  employment  first  as 
clerk  in  a  commission  house,,  and  at  nineteen  being 
junior  partner  in  the  firm  of  Clark  &  Rockefeller., 
commission  merchants. 

At  that  time  the  petroleum  fields  of  Pennsylvania 
were  just  beginning  to  be  developed,  and  young  Rock 
efeller's  attention  was  soon  attracted  to  them.  He 
seems  to  have  been  one  of  the  first  to  realize  the  vast 
possibilities  of  the  oil  business,  and  in  1865,  he  and 
his  brother  William  built  at  Cleveland  a  refinery 
which  they  called  the  Standard  Oil  Works.  They 
had  little  money,  but  unlimited  nerve,  and  very  soon 
began  the  work  of  consolidation,  which  culminated 
in  the  formation  of  the  Standard  Oil  Trust  in  1882. 
They  were  able  to  kill  competition  largely  by  securing 
from  the  railroads  lower  shipping  rates  than  any  com 
petitor,,  in  some  cases  going  so  far  as  to  get  a  rebate 
on  all  oil  shipped  by  competitors.  That  is,  if  a  rail 
road  charged  the  Standard  Oil  Company  one  dollar 
to  carry  its  oil  between  two  points  and  charged  a  com 
petitor  a  dollar  and  a  quarter  for  the  same  service, 
that  extra  quarter  went,  not  into  the  coffers  of  the 
railroad,  but  into  the  coffers  of  the  Standard  Oil 
-Company.  Such  methods  of  business  have  since  been 
made  illegal,  and  the  Standard  is  compelled  to  do 

244 


Philanthropists  and  Reformers 

business  on  the  same  basis  as  its  competitors,  but  its- 
vast  resources  and  occupancy  of  the  field  give  it  an 
advantage  which  nothing  can  counteract. 

The  operations  of  the  Standard  Oil  Company  na 
turally  piled  up  a  great  fortune  for  John  D.  Rocke- 
feller — how  great  cannot  even  be  estimated.  !N"ot 
until  comparatively  recent  years,  did  he  turn  his 
attention  from  making  money  to  spending  it,  but 
when  he  did,  it  was  in  a  royal  fashion.  Ten  mil 
lion  dollars  were  given  to  the  University  of  Chi 
cago,  which  opened  its  doors  in  1892,  and  now  has 
an  enrollment  of  over  five  thousand  students;  ten 
million  more  were  given  to  the  General  Education. 
Board,  organized  in  1903,  for  the  purpose  of  promot 
ing  education  in  the  United  States,  without  distinc 
tion  of  race,  sex,  or  creed,  and  especially  to  promote 
and  systematize  various  forms  of  educational  benefi 
cence  ;  a  million  was  given  to  Yale ;  the  great  Rocke 
feller  Institute  for  Medical  Research  was  founded  at 
New  York  and  liberally  endowed;  and  Mr.  Rocke 
feller's  total  benefactions  probably  exceed  a  total  of 
thirty  millions.  This  will  soon  be  greatly  increased, 
for  he  has  just  asked  Congress  to  charter  an  institu 
tion  to  be  known  as  the  Rockefeller  Foundation, 
which  lie  will  endow  on  an  enormous  scale  to  carry 
out  various  plans  of  charity,  through  centuries  to- 
come. 

He  seems  recently  to  have  experienced  a  change  of 
heart,  too,  toward  the  public.  During  his  early  years, 
he  gained  a  reputation  for  coldness  and  reserve,  which 
made  him  probably  the  best-hated  man  in  the  United 

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A  Guide  to  Biography 

-States.  Then,  suddenly,  he  changed  about.  Instead 
of  refusing  himself  to  reporters,  he  welcomed  them ; 
he  seemed  glad  to  talk,  anxious  to  show  the  public 
that  he  was  by  no  means  such  a  monster  as  he  was 
painted;  and  he  has  even,  quite  recently,  written  his 
life  story  and  given  it  to  a  great  magazine  for  publi* 
cation.  Seldom  before  has  any  public  man  shown  such 
-a  sudden  and  complete  change  of  heart.  He  still  re 
mains,  in  a  sense,  an  enigma,  for  it  seems  possible 
that  the  smiling  face  he  has  lately  turned  to  the  world 
conceals  the  real  man  more  effectively  than  the  frown 
ing  countenance  he  wore  in  former  years. 

As  the  dramatist  saves  his  finest  effect  for  the  fall 
of  the  curtain,  so  we  have  saved  for  the  last  the  most 
remarkable  giver  in  history — Andrew  Carnegie, 
whose  total  benefactions  amount  to  at  least  one  hun 
dred  millions  of  dollars.  A  sum  so  stupendous  would 
bankrupt  many  a  nation,  yet  Mr.  Carnegie  is  so  far 
from  bankrupt  that  his  gifts  show  no  sign  of  diminu 
tion.  The  story  of  how,  starting  out  as  a  poor  boy, 
on  the  lowest  round  of  the  ladder,  he  acquired  this 
immense  fortune,  is  a  striking  one. 

Andrew  Carnegie  was  born  in  Scotland  in  1835. 
His  father  was  a  weaver,  at  one  time  fairly  well-to- 
do,  for  he  owned  four  hand  looms ;  but  the  introduc 
tion  of  steam  ruined  hand-loom  weaving,  and  after 
a  long  struggle,  ending  in  hardship  and  poverty,  the 
looms  were  sold  at  a  sacrifice  and  the  family  set  sail 
for  America.  Mrs.  Carnegie  happened  to  have  two 
sisters  living  at  Pittsburgh,  and  there  the  family 
settled — by  one  of  those  curious  chances  of  fate,  the 

246 


Philanthropists  and  Reformers 

very  place  in  all  the  world  best  suited  to  the  develop 
ment  of  young  Andrew  Carnegie's  peculiar  genius. 

At  the  age  of  twelve  years,  he  became  a  wage- 
earner,  his  first  position  being  that  of  bobbin-boy 
in  a  cotton  mill  at  Alleghany  City,  where  his  salary 
was  $1.20  a  week.  Pretty  soon  he  was  set  to  firing 
a  small  engine  in  the  cellar  of  the  mill,  but  he  did 
not  like  this  work,  and  finally  secured  a  position  as 
messenger  boy  in  the  office  of  the  Atlantic  &  Ohio 
Telegraph  Company,  at  Pittsburgh.  One  night,  at 
the  end  of  the  month,  he  did  not  receive  his  pay  with 
the  rest  of  the  boys,  but  was  told  to  wait  till  the 
others  had  left  the  room.  He  thought  that  dismissal 
was  coming,  and  wondered  how  he  could  ever  go 
home  and  tell  his  father  and  mother !  But  he  found 
that  he  was  to  be  given  an  increase  in  salary,  from 
$11.25  to  $13.50  a  month. 

"  I  ran  all  the  way  home,"  said  Mr.  Carnegie,  in 
telling  of  the  incident,  long  afterwards.  "  Talk 
about  your  millionaires !  All  the  millions  I've  made 
combined,  never  gave  me  the  happiness  of  that  rise 
of  $2.25  a  month.  Arrived  at  the  cottage  where  we 
lived,  I  handed  my  mother  the  usual  $11.25,  and 
that  night  in  bed  told  brother  Tom  the  great  secret. 
The  next  morning,  Sunday,  we  were  all  sitting  at 
the  breakfast  table,  and  I  said :  e  Mother,  I  have 
something  else  for  you,'  and  then  I  gave  her  the 
$2.25,  and  told  her  how  I  got  it.  Father  and  she 
were  delighted  to  hear  of  my  good  fortune,  but, 
motherlike,  she  said  I  deserved  it,  and  then  came 
tears  of  joy." 

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It  was  at  the  dinner  given,  in  1907,  in  his  honor 
as  "  Father  of  the  Corps,"  by  the  surviving  mem 
bers  of  the  United  States  Military  Telegraph  Corps 
of  the  Civil  War,  that  Mr.  Carnegie  spoke  these 
words,  and  he  continued  as  follows: 

"  Comrades,  I  was  born  in  poverty,  and  would  not 
exchange  its  sacred  memories  with  the  richest  mil 
lionaire's  son  who  ever  breathed.  What  does  he 
know  about  mother  or  father  \  They  are  mere  names 
to  him.  Give  me  the  life  of  the  boy  whose  mother  is 
nurse,  seamstress,  washerwoman,  cook,  teacher, 
angel  and  saint,  all  in  one,  and  whose  father  is  guide, 
exemplar,  and  friend.  These  are  the  boys  who  are 
born  to  the  best  fortune.  Some  men  think  that 
poverty  is  a  dreadful  burden,  and  that  wealth  leads 
to  happiness.  They  have  lived  only  one  side;  they 
imagine  the  other.  I  have  lived  both,  and  I  know 
there  is  very  little  in  wealth  that  can  add  to  human 
happiness,  beyond  the  small  comforts  of  life.  Mil 
lionaires  who  laugh,  are  rare.  My  experience  is  that 
wealth  is  apt  to  take  the  smiles  away." 

But  we  are  getting  ahead  of  our  story.  That 
small  increase  in  salary  meant  a  good  deal  to  the 
little  family,  whose  father  was  working  from  dawn  to 
dark  in  the  cotton-mill,  and  whose  mother  was  con 
tributing  what  she  could  to  the  family  earnings  by 
binding  shoes  in  the  intervals  of  housework.  Mean 
time  the  superintendent  of  the  company  for  which 
the  boy  was  working  happened  to  meet  him  while 
visiting  the  Pittsburgh  office,,  and  it  was  discovered 
that  both  of  them  had  been  born  near  the  same  town 

248 


Philanthropists  and  Reformers 

in  Scotland.  The  fact  may  have  had  something'  to 
do  with  the  boy's  subsequent  promotion,  and  it  is 
worth  noting  that  forty  years  later,  he  was  able  to 
secure  for  his  old  employer  the  United  States  con 
sulship  to  the  town  of  their  birth.  But  for  the  time 
being,  he  was  busy  with  his  work  as  messenger-boy. 
He  soon  learned  the  Morse  alphabet  and  practised 
making  the  signals  early  in  the  morning  before  the 
operators  arrived.  He  was  soon  able  to  send  and 
receive  messages  by  means  of  the  Morse  register — 
a  steel  pen  which  embossed  the  dots  and  dashes  of  the 
message  on  a  narrow  strip  of  paper.  But  young  Car 
negie  soon  progressed  a  step  beyond  this,  and  wras 
soon  able  to  read  the  messages  by  sound,  without 
need  of  the  register.  It  was,  of  course,  only  a  short 
time  after  that  when  he  was  regularly  installed  as 
operator. 

He  was  not  to  remain  long  in  the  telegraph  busi 
ness,  however,  for  Thomas  A.  Scott,  superintendent 
of  the  Pittsburgh  division  of  the  Pennsylvania  Bail- 
road,  offered  him  a  position  at  a  salary  of  $35  a 
month.  Carnegie  promptly  accepted,  and  on  Febru 
ary  1,  1853,  at  the  age  of  seventeen,  entered  the  em 
ploy  of  the  road.  His  promotion  was  rapid,  and  he 
rose  to  be  superintendent  of  the  Pittsburgh  division, 
before  the  success  of  his  other  ventures  caused  him 
to  resign  from  the  service.  These  ventures  were,  in 
the  first  place,  investment  in  the  newly-developed 
oil-fields  of  Pennsylvania,  which  yielded  a  great  prof 
it,  and  afterwards  the  establishment  of  a  steel  roll 
ing-mill,  in  the  development  of  which  he  found  his 

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true  vocation,  building  up  the  most  complete  system 
of  iron  and  steel  industries  ever  controlled  by  an  in 
dividual.  Some  idea  of  the  value  of  the  business 
may  be  gained  from  the  fact  that,  when  the  United 
States  Steel  Corporation  was  organized  in  1901  to 
take  over  Mr.  Carnegie's  interests  he  received  for 
them,  first  mortgage  bonds  to  the  amount  of  three 
hundred  million  dollars. 

It  is  this  sum  which  he  has  been  disposing  of  for 
years.  Unlike  most  other  philanthropists,  he  has 
not  used  his  wealth  to  endow  a  great  university,  but 
has  devoted  it  mainly  to  another  branch  of  educa 
tion,  the  establishment  of  free  public  libraries.  He 
conceived  the  unique  plan  of  offering  a  library  build 
ing,  completely  equipped,  to  any  community  which 
would  agree  to  maintain  it  suitably,  and,  by  the  be 
ginning  of  1909,  had,  under  this  plan,  given  nearly 
fifty-two  millions  of  dollars  for  the  erection  of  1858 
buildings,  of  which  1167  are  in  this  country.  Among 
his  other  great  gifts  was  one  of  $12,000,000,  for  the 
founding  at  Washington  of  an  institution  "which 
shall,  in  the  broadest  and  most  liberal  manner,  en 
courage  investigation,  research,  and  discovery,  show 
the  application  of  knowledge  to  the  improvement  of 
mankind,  and  provide  such  buildings,  laboratories, 
books,  and  apparatus  as  may  be  needed." 

The  sum  of  ten  millions  was  given  to  the  great 
Carnegie  Institute,  of  Pittsburgh;  still  another  ten 
millions  were  given  to  Scottish  universities,  and 
still  another  for  the  purpose  of  providing  pensions 
for  college  professors  in  the  United  States  and  Can- 

250 


Philanthropists  and  Reformers 

•ada;  and  finally  five  millions  for  the  establishment 
of  a  fund  to  be  used  for  the  benefit  of  the  dependants 
of  those  losing  their  lives  in  heroic  effort  to  save 
their  fellow-men,  or  for  the  heroes  themselves,  if 
injured  only.  What  great  benefaction  will  next  be 
announced  cannot,  of  course,  be  foretold,  but  that 
some  other  announcement  will  some  day  be  forth 
coming  can  scarcely  be  doubted,  since  Mr.  Carnegie 
has  announced  his  ambition  to  die  poor. 

Although  born  in  Scotland  and  maintaining  a 
great  estate  there,  he  is  an  American  out-and-out. 
He  proved  his  patriotism  during  the  Civil  War  by 
serving  as  superintendent  of  military  railways  and 
government  telegraph  lines  in  the  east;  and  has 
proved  it  more  than  once  since  by  enlisting  in  the 
fight  for  civic  betterment  and  good  government. 
Thousands  of  benefactions  stand  to  his  credit,  be 
sides  the  great  ones  which  have  been  mentioned 
above,  and  it  is  doubtful  if  in  the  history  of  the 
world  there  has  ever  been  another  man  armed  with 
such  power  and  using  it  in  such  a  way. 

We  will  end  here  the  story  of  American  benefac 
tions,  although  scarcely  the  half  of  it  has  been  told. 
During  the  last  forty  years,  not  less  than  one  hun 
dred  millions  of  dollars  have  been  given  to  American 
colleges;  nearly  as  much  again  has  been  given  for 
the  endowment  of  hospitals,  sanitariums  and  infirm 
aries;  vast  sums  have  been  given  for  other  educa 
tional  or  charitable  purposes,  so  that,  of  the  great 
fortunes  which  have  been  accumulated  in  this  coun 
try,  at  least  three  hundred  millions  have  been  re- 

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turned,  in  .some  form  or  other,  to  the  people.  And 
the  end  is  not  yet.  Scientific  philanthropy  is  as  yet 
in  its  infancy.  Just  the  other  day,  Mrs.  Kussell 
Sage  set  apart  the  sum  of  ten  million  dollars  for  a 
fund  whose  chief  and  almost  sole  purpose  it  is  to 
obtain  accurate  information  concerning  social  and 
economic  conditions — in  other  words,  to  furnish  the 
data  upon  which  the  scientific  philanthropy  of  the 
future  will  be  based.  The  disposition  toward  such 
employment  of  great  fortunes,  and  away  from  the 
selfish  piling-up  of  wealth  is  one  of  the  most  cheer 
ing  and  promising  developments  of  the  new  century 
in  this  great  land  of  ours;  the  kings  of  finance  are 
coming  to  realize  that,  after  all,  wealth  is  useless  un 
less  it  is  used  for  good,  and  the  next  half  century 
will  no  doubt  witness  the  establishment  of  philan 
thropic  enterprises  on  a  scale  hitherto  unknown  to 
history. 

We  have  already  said  that  the  highest  form  of 
philanthropy  is  not  the  giving  of  money,  but  the  giv 
ing  of  self,  and  we  shall  close  this  chapter  with  a 
brief  consideration  of  the  careers  of  a  few  of  the 
many  men  and  women  who,  in  the  course  of  Ameri 
can  history,  have  devoted  their  lives  to  the  better 
ment  of  humanity,  either  as  ministers  of  the  gospel 
or  as  laborers  for  some  great  reform. 

Among  ministers,  no  name  has  been  more  widely 
known  than  that  of  Beecher — first,  Lyman  Beecher, 
and  afterwards  his  brilliant  son,  Henry  Ward 
Beecher.  Lyman  Beecher  was  born  in  New  Haven, 

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Philanthropists  and  Reformers 

^Connecticut,  in  1775,  the  son  of  a  blacksmith,  and 
his  youth  was  spent  between  blacksmithing  and  farm 
ing.  His  love  of  books  soon  manifested  itself,  how 
ever,  and  means  were  found  to  prepare  him  for 
Yale,  where  he  graduated  at  the  age  of  twenty-two. 
A  further  year  of  study  enabled  him  to  enter  the 
ministry.  For  sixteen  years,  he  was  pastor  of  the 
Congregational  church  at  Litchfield,  Connecticut, 
and  soon  took  rank  as  the  leading  clergyman  of  his 
denomination.  His  eloquence,  zeal  and  courage  won 
a  wide  reputation,  and  in  1832,  he  was  offered  the 
presidency  of  the  newly-organized  Lane  seminary, 
at  Cincinnati.  This  place  he  held  for  twenty  years, 
and  his  name  was  continued  as  president  in  the 
seminary  catalogue,  until  his  death. 

Soon  after  he  assumed  this  position,  the  slavery 
question  began  to  assume  the  acute  phase  which 
ended  in  the  Civil  War.  Mr.  Beecher  was,  of  course, 
an  Abolitionist,  and  for  a  time  lived  in  a  turmoil, 
for  many  of  the  seminary  students  were  from  the 
south,  while  Cincinnati  itself  was  so  near  the  border 
line  that  there  was  a  great  pro-slavery  sentiment 
there.  But  during  Mr.  Beecher's  absence,  his  trus 
tees  tried  to  allay  excitement  and,  in  a  way,  carry 
water  on  both  shoulders,  by  forbidding  all  further 
discussion  of  slavery  in  the  seminary,  and  succeeded 
in  nearly  wrecking  the  institution,  for  the  students 
.withdrew  in  a  body,  and  while  a  few  were  persuaded 
to  return,  the  great  majority  refused  to  do  so  and 
laid  the  foundation  of  Oberlin  College.  For  seven 
teen  years,  Mr.  Beecher  labored  to  restore  the  semi- 

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nary's  prosperity,  but  finally  abandoned  the  task  in 
despair.  He  resigned  the  presidency  in  1852,  in 
tending  to  devote  his  remaining  years  to  the  revision 
and  publication  of  his  works,  but  a  paralytic  stroke 
put  an  end  to  his  active  career. 

Mr.  Beecher's  vigor  of  mind  and  body  were  im 
parted  in  a  remarkable  degree  to  his  children,  of 
whom  he  had  thirteen.  Of  Harriet  Beecher  Stowe 
we  have  already  spoken,  but  by  far  the  most  famous 
of  them  was  Henry  Ward  Beecher.  Born  in  1813, 
and  renouncing  an  early  desire  for  a  sea-faring  life 
in  favor  of  the  ministry,  he  secured  his  first  charge 
in  1837,  and  ten  years  later  entered  upon  the  pas 
torate  of  Plymouth  church,  in  Brooklyn,  where  his 
chief  fame  was  won.  The  church,  one  of  the  largest 
in  the  country,  soon  became  inadequate  to  hold  the 
crowds  which  flocked  to  hear  his  brilliant  preaching. 
As  a  lecturer  and  platform  orator  he  soon  came  to 
be  in  such  demand  that  he  was  at  last  compelled  to 
decline  all  such  engagements.  He  took  an  active 
part  in  politics,  holding  that  Christianity  was  not  a 
series  of  dogmas,  but  a  rule  of  everyday  life,  and 
did  not  hesitate  to  attack  the  abuses  of  the  day  from 
the  pulpit.  He  was  as  facile  with  the  pen  as  with 
the  tongue,  and  his  publications  were  many  and  im 
portant.  All  in  all,  he  was  one  of  the  most  influen 
tial  and  picturesque  figures  that  has  ever  occupied 
an  American  pulpit. 

Lyman  Beecher  was  at  all  times  a  doughty  antag 
onist,  and  in  1826  he  had  been  called  to  Boston  to 
take  up  the  cudgels  against  the  so-called  Unitarian. 

254 


Philanthropists  and  Keformers 

movement  which  had  developed  there,  under  the 
leadership  of  William  Ellery  Charming.  For  six 
years  and  a  half,  he  wielded  the  cudgels  of  contro 
versy,  but  with  no  great  effect,  for  Channing  was  a 
foeman  in  every  sense  his  equal.  Channing  had 
graduated  at  Harvard  in  1798,  a  small  man  of  an 
almost  feminine  sensibility,  with  a  singular  capacity 
for  winning  devoted  attachment  from  all  with  whom 
he  came  in  contact.  For  two  years,  he  served  as 
tutor  in  a  family  at  Richmond,  Virginia,  where  he 
acquired  an  abhorrence  of  slavery  that  lasted  through 
life.  Upon  his  return  north,  he  began  the  study  of 
theology  at  Cambridge,  and  in  1803,  became  pastor 
of  a  church  in  Boston,  where  he  soon  attracted  atten 
tion  by  sermons  of  a  rare  "  fervor,  solemnity,  and 
beauty."  He  was  from  the  first  identified  with  the 
movement  of  thought,  which  came  to  be  known  as 
Unitarian,  and  gave  to  the  body  so-called  a  conscious 
ness  of  its  position  and  a  clear  statement  of  its 
convictions  with  his  sermon  delivered  at  Baltimore, 
in  1819,  on  the  occasion  of  the  ordination  of  Jared 
Sparks.  For  the  fifteen  years  succeeding,  Chan 
ning  was  best  known  to  the  public  as  the  leader  of 
the  Unitarian  movement,  and  his  sermons  delivered 
during  that  period  constitute  the  best  body  of  prac 
tical  divinity  which  that  movement  has  produced. 
In  later  years,  he  was  identified  with  many  philan- 
thropical  and  reform  movements,  and  was  one  of  the 
pillars  of  the  anti-slavery  cause,  though  never  adopt 
ing  the  extreme  opinions  of  the  abolitionists.  Of  his 
rare  quality  and  power  as  a  pulpit  orator  many  tra- 

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ditions  remain,  and  his  death  at  the  age  of  sixty-two 
removed  a  great  power  for  righteousness. 

Even  to  give  a  list  of  the  men  and  women  who 
have  sacrificed  their  lives  in  the  attempt  to  carry  the 
gospel  of  Christianity  to  heathen  nations  is  beyond 
the  limits  of  a  book  like  this,  but  at  least  mention 
can  be  made  of  two  of  the  earliest,  Adoniram  Judson 
and  his  wife,  whose  experiences  form  one  of  the  most 
thrilling  chapters  in  missionary  history. 

Adoniram  Judson  was  born  in  Maiden,  Massachu 
setts,  in  1788,  and  after  graduating  at  Brown  Uni 
versity,  and  taking  a  special  course  at  Andover  Theo 
logical  seminary,  became  deeply  interested  in  foreign 
missions,  and  in  1810,  determined  to  go  to  Burmah. 
Securing  the  support  of  the  London  Missionary  So 
ciety,  he  sailed  for  Asia  on  the  nineteenth  of  Febru 
ary,  1812.  Two  weeks  before,  he  had  married  Ann 
Haseltine,  who  consented  to  share  his  work,  and  who 
sailed  with  him.  On  that  long  voyage,  they  had  am 
ple  time  to  discuss  and  consider  the  various  dogmas 
of  their  faith,  and  they  became  convinced  that  the 
baptism  of  the  New  Testament  was  immersion,  and 
in  accordance  with  this  view,  both  of  them  were  bap 
tized  by  immersion  upon  reaching  Calcutta.  But 
this  change  of  faith  cut  them  off  from  the  body  which 
had  sent  them  to  India,  and  it  was  not  until  1814 
that  the  Baptists  of  America  took  the  two  mission 
aries  under  their  care. 

Meanwhile,  Dr.  Judson  mastered  the  Burmese 
language  and  began  his  public  preaching.  Before 
long,  he  baptized  his  first  convert,  and  pushed  for- 

256 


Philanthropists  and  Reformers 

ward  the  work  with  renewed  zeal,  translating  the 
gospels  into  Burmese,  publishing  tracts  in  that  lan 
guage,  and  undertaking  the  most  perilous  journeys. 
The  Burmese  government  had  never  heen  friendly, 
and  in  1824,  seized  the  missionaries  and  threw 
them  into  prison.  They  were  confined  in  the  "  death 
hole,"  reeking  with  foul  air,  without  light,  and  were 
loaded  with  fetters.  Just  enough  food  was  given 
them  to  keep  them  alive,  and  at  last,  stripped  almost 
naked,  they  were  driven  like  cattle  under  the 
burning  sun,  to  another  prison,  where  it  was  in 
tended  to  burn  them  alive.  They  were  saved  by  the 
intercession  of  Sir  Archibald  Campbell,  but  Mrs. 
Judson's  health  had  been  wrecked  by  the  terrible  ex 
perience.  She  never  recovered,  dying  two  years 
later.  Undaunted  by  difficulties,  Dr.  Judson  con 
tinued  his  work,  completing  his  translation  of  the 
Bible,  travelling  over  India,  compiling  a  Burmese 
grammar  and  dictionary,  but  his  labors  at  last  un 
dermined  even  his  constitution  and  he  died  at  sea  in 
1850,  while  on  his  way  to  the  Isle  of  France. 

Turn  we  now  to  Lucretia  Mott,  one  of  the  most 
extraordinary  women  who  ever  lived  in  America. 
Born  in  ISTantucket  in  1793,  the  daughter  of  a  sea- 
captain  named  Thomas  Coffin,  she  was  raised  in  the 
strict  Quaker  faith,  to  which  her  parents  belonged. 
She  began  teaching  while  still  a  girl,  and  at  the  age 
of  eighteen,  married  a  fellow  teacher,  James  Mott. 
It  was  not  long  after  that,  that  she  developed  the 
"  gift  "  of  speaking  at  the  Quaker  meetings,  simply, 
earnestly  and  eloquently.  The  Quakers  had  always 

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opposed  slavery  and  Lucretia  Mott  was  soon  work 
ing  heart  and  soul  against  it.  When  the  American 
Anti-Slavery  Society  was  organized  in  1833,  she  was 
one  of  four  women  who  joined  it,  and  she  proceeded 
immediately  to  organize  the  Female  Ant i- Slavery 
Society,  the  first  organization  of  women  in  America 
working  for  a  political  purpose.  Years  of  ahuse  fol 
lowed,  for  in  those  days  anti-slavery  lecturers  were 
tarred  and  feathered,  their  homes  burned,  and  many 
other  indignities  heaped  upon  them.  Throughout  all 
this,  Mrs.  Mott  never  lost  her  serenity,  and  never 
suffered  bodily  injury.  On  one  occasion,  the  annual 
meeting  of  the  Anti-Slavery  Society,  in  IsTew  York, 
was  broken  up  by  a  mob,  and  some  of  the  speakers 
were  roughly  handled.  Perceiving  that  some  of  the 
women  were  badly  frightened,  Mrs.  Mott  asked  her 
escort  to  look  after  them. 

"  But  who  will  take  care  of  you  ?  "  he  asked. 

"  This  man  will,"  she  said,  and  smilingly  laid  her 
hand  upon  the  arm  of  one  of  the  leaders  of  the  mob. 
"  He  will  see  me  safe  through." 

The  rioter  stared  down  at  her  for  a  moment,  his 
conflicting  thoughts  betraying  themselves  upon  his 
countenance,  then  his  better  nature  triumphed  and 
he  led  her  respectfully  to  a  place  of  safety. 

She  seems  to  have  possessed  the  power  of  charm 
ing  any  audience,  and  carried  her  anti-slavery  cam 
paign  even  into  Kentucky,  where  she  commanded  re 
spectful  attention.  She  was  one  of  the  first  to  take 
up  the  question  of  woman  suffrage,  and  in  1848,  with 
[Elizabeth  Cady  Stanton  and  a  few  others,  called  the 

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Philanthropists  and  Reformers 

first  Woman's  Suffrage  Convention  ever  held  in  this 
country.  For  fifty  years  she  continued  her  public 
work,  until  she  grew  to  be  one  of  the  best  known 
and  best  loved  women  in  the  country.  She  lived  to 
see  the  slave  freed,  and  when  she  died,  a  great  eon- 
course  followed  her  body  silently  to  the  grave.  A3 
they  stood  there  with  bowed  heads,  a  low  voice  asked, 
"  Will  110  one  say  anything  ?  " 

"  Who  can  speak  ? "  another  voice  responded,. 
"  The  preacher  is  dead." 

In  this  day  of  pitying  and  enlightened  treatment 
of  the  insane,  it  is  difficult  to  realize  the  barbarities 
which  they  were  called  upon  to  endure  a  century  ago. 
They  were-  regarded  almost  as  wild  beasts,  were  kept 
chained  in  foul  and  loathsome  places,  fed  witK 
mouldy  bread,  filthy  water,  and  allowed  to  die  the 
most  miserable  death.  For  everyone  used  to  believe 
that  insanity  was  a  mark  of  God's  displeasure,  and 
the  outcast  from  His  heart  became  equally  an  out* 
cast  from  the  hearts  of  men.  The  insane  were  re* 
garded  with  fear  and  loathing,  and  it  was  not  until 
the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century  that  such. 
men  as  Dr.  Channing  began  to  insist  on  the  presence 
in  human  nature,  even  in  its  most  degraded  condi 
tion,  of  grains  of  good. 

It  was  from  Dr.  Channing  that  Dorothea  Lynde 
Dix  drank  in  this  theory  with  passionate  faith,  and 
proceeded  at  once  to  convert  it  into  action.  She 
was  governess  of  Dr.  Channing' s  children,  and  had 
long  been  interested  in  bettering  the  condition  of 

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convicts;  but  now  her  attention  was  turned  to  the 
insane  and  she  proceeded  at  once  to  master  the  whole 
question  of  insanity,  its  origin,  its  development,  and 
its  treatment,  so  far  as  it  was  then  known.  Enlist 
ing  the  aid  of  a  number  of  broad-minded  men,  among 
them  Charles  Sumner,  she  went  to  work.  In  one 
prison,  she  found  two  insane  women,  each  confined 
in  a  small  cage  of  planks ;  others  were  locked  in  clos 
ets,  cellars,  and  stalls;  some  of  them  were  naked, 
some  were  chained,  some  were  regularly  beaten  and 
scourged.  With  all  her  data  at  hand,  she  addressed 
a  memorial  to  the  Massachusetts  legislature,  setting 
forth,  in  page  after  page,  the  details  of  these  almost 
incredible  horrors,  which  she  herself  had  witnessed. 
It  exploded  like  a  bombshell,  for  it  was  a  terrific 
arraignment  of  the  whole  state.  Her  statements  were 
denounced  as  untrue  and  slanderous,  but  a  little  in 
vestigation  proved  their  truth,  and  with  such  men 
behind  her  as  Channing,  Horace  Mann,  and  Samuel 
G.  Howe,  it  was  soon  apparent  that  something  would 
be  done.  The  obstructions  and  delays  of  politicians 
were  swept  away  before  a  steadily  rising  tide  of  pub 
lic  indignation,  and  a  large  appropriation  was  made 
by  the  legislature  to  provide  proper  quarters  and  prop 
er  treatment  for  insane  persons.  So  Miss  Dix  won 
her  first  great  victory,  the  forerunner  of  similar  ones 
in  almost  every  state  in  the  union;  for  she  travelled 
from  state  to  state  making  the  same  investigations 
she  had  in  Massachusetts,  arousing  public  opinion, 
and  compelling  legislature  after  legislature  to  make 
adequate  provision  for  the  insane.  The  vastness  of 

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Philanthropists  and  Reformers 

this  campaign  which  Miss  Dix  planned  deliberately 
and  which  she  carried  through  until  she  had  visited 
every  state  east  of  the  Rocky  Mountains,  gives  evi 
dence  to  her  extraordinary  character.  During  the 
Civil  War,  she  was  superintendent  of  hospital 
nurses,  having  the  entire  control  of  their  appoint 
ment  and  assignment.  But  the  care  of  the  insane 
was  her  life  work.  She  resumed  it  at  the  close  of 
the  war,  and  carried  it  forward  until  her  death. 

We  have  already  referred  more  than  once,  in  the 
course  of  these  chapters,  to  the  anti-slavery  agitation 
which  ended  in  the  Civil  War.  During  the  second 
quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century,  it  was  the  one 
great  political  question  in  America,  upon  which  men 
were  compelled  to  take  one  side  or  the  other.  From 
the  first,  there  existed  in  the  north  a  band  of  aboli 
tionists — of  men,  in  other  words,  who  believed  that 
the  only  solution  of  the  slavery  question  was  to  put 
an  end  to  that  institution  at  once  and  forever.  Of 
the  persecutions  which  were  visited  on  the  abolition 
ists  we  have  spoken  when  telling  the  story  of  Lu- 
cretia  Mott.  Social  ostracism  was  the  least  of  them. 

Perhaps  no  one  person  in  America  did  more  to 
crystalize  public  sentiment  against  slavery  than 
Lydia  Maria  Child.  An  author  at  the  age  of  seven 
teen,  and  writing  continuously  until  her  death,  com 
ing  early  under  the  influence  of  William  Lloyd  Gar 
rison,  that  great  leader  of  the  abolitionists,  it  was 
inevitable  that  she  should  employ  her  pen  to  assist 
the  cause.  In  1833  appeared  her  "  Appeal  for  that 

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class  of  Americans  called  Africans,"  the  first  anti- 
slavery  work  printed  in  America  in  book  form,  ante 
dating  Mrs.  Stowe's  "  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  "  by  nine 
teen  years.  It  attracted  wide  attention,  enlisting  the 
interest  of  such  men  as  Dr.  Channing,  who  walked 
from  Boston  to  Roxbury  to  thank  the  author.  But  it 
was  not  without  its  penalties,  for  society  closed  its 
-doors  to  Mrs.  Child,  many  of  her  friends  deserted 
her;  and  she  was  made  the  subject  of  much  cruel 
comment.  However,  she  became  more  and  more  in 
terested  in  the  anti-slavery  crusade,  edited  the  "  Na 
tional  Anti-Slavery  Standard,"  and  wrote  pamphlet 
after  pamphlet.  When  John  Brown  was  taken  pris 
oner,  she  wrote  him  a  letter  of  sympathy,  which  drew 
forth  a  courteous  rebuke  from  Governor  Wise,  of 
Virginia,  and  a  letter  from  the  wife  of  Senator 
Mason,  the  author  of  the  fugitive  slave  law,  threat 
ening  her  with  future  damnation.  These  letters  were 
published  and  had  a  circulation  of  three  hundred 
thousand  copies.  Wendell  Phillips  paid  an  eloquent 
tribute  to  her  character  and  influence,  at  her  fu 
neral:  "  She  was  the  kind  of  woman,"  he  said,  "  one 
would  choose  to  represent  woman's  entrance  into 
broader  life.  Modest,  womanly,  sincere,  solid,  real, 
loyal,  to  be  trusted,  equal  to  affairs,  and  yet  above 
them ;  a  companion  with  the  password  of  every 
science  and  all  literature." 

But  however  valuable  the  services  of  women  like 
Lucretia  Mott  and  Lydia  Maria  Child  and  Harriet 
Beecher  Stowe  were  in  the  fight  against  slavery,  the 
leader  and  high  priest  of  the  movement  was  William 

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Philanthropists  and  Reformers 

Lloyd  Garrison.  Born  in  Newburyport,  Massachu 
setts,  in  1805,  his  was  an  unhappy  boyhood,  for  his 
father,  a  sea-captain  of  intemperate  and  adventurous 
habits,  left  his  family,  soon  after  the  boy  was  born, 
and  was  never  seen  again.  The  mother,  a  woman  of 
unusual  strength  of  character,  went  to  work  to  earn 
a  living  for  herself  and  her  son,  and  it  was  to  her 
careful  training  that  his  development  was  due.  At 
fourteen  years  of  age,  he  was  apprenticed  to  a  print- 
ery  and  served  until  he  was  of  age.  From  the  first 
he  was  remarkable  for  his  firmness  of  moral  prin 
ciple  and  for  an  inflexible  adherence  to  his  convic 
tions,  no  matter  at  what  cost  to  himself. 

He  soon  showed,  too,  that  he  was  destined  for 
something  more  than  a  printer — a  man  who  puts  in 
print  the  ideas  of  others — that  he  had  ideas  of  his 
own.  His  apprenticeship  over,  he  started  a  paper  of 
his  own,  but  it  was  too  reformatory  for  the  taste  of 
the  day,  and  proved  a  failure.  The  most  noteworthy 
thing  in  connection  with  it  was  the  publication  of 
some  poems  which  had  been  sent  in  anonymously, 
and  which  Garrison,  recognizing  their  merit,  discov 
ered  to  be  the  work  of  John  G.  Whittier,  then  en 
tirely  unknown.  He  visited  the  poet,  encouraged 
him  to  keep  on  writing,  and  laid  the  foundation  of  a 
friendship  which  was  broken  only  by  death. 

Going  to  Boston  after  the  failure  of  his  paper, 
Garrison  for  a  time  edited  the  "  National  Philan 
thropist,"  devoted  to  prohibition.  This  paper,  too, 
was  a  failure,  but  at  Boston  Garrison  met  a  man 
whose  influence  changed  the  whole  course  of  his 

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life.  His  name  was  Benjamin  Bundy.  He  was  a 
Quaker,  and  at  that  time  thirty-nine  years  of  age. 
He  was  a  saddler  by  trade,  but  for  thirteen  years 
had  devoted  his  life  to  the  anti-slavery  cause,  form 
ing  anti-slavery  societies  and  editing  a  little  monthly 
paper  with  a  portentous  name — "  The  Genius  of 
Universal  Emancipation."  Bundy,  whose  home  was 
in  Baltimore,  had  journeyed  to  ~New  England  in  the 
hope  of  interesting  the  clergy  in  the  cause.  In  this 
he  was  bitterly  disappointed,  but  he  mightily  stirred 
the  heart  of  young  Garrison,  who  soon  became  his 
ally  and  afterwards  his  partner  in  the  conduct  of 
the  paper.  His  vigorous  editing  of  it  was  soon  a 
national  sensation.  He  had  seen  with  dismay  the  in 
difference  with  which  the  north  regarded  the  great 
issue — an  indifference  grounded  on  the  belief  that 
slavery  was  intrenched  by  the  constitution  and  that 
all  discussion  of  it  was  a  menace  to  the  Union.  He 
realized  that  this  indifference  could  be  broken  only 
by  heroic  measures,  and  he  took  the  ground  that  since 
slavery  was  wrong,  every  slave  had  a  right  to  in 
stant  freedom,  and  that  immediate  emancipation  was 
the  duty  of  the  master  and  of  the  state. 

Baltimore  was  at  that  time  one  of  the  centres  of 
the  slave  trade.  There  were  slave-pens  on  the  prin 
cipal  streets,  and  Garrison  soon  witnessed  scenes 
which  would  have  touched  a  less  tender  heart.  In 
the  first  issue  of  his  paper,  he  denounced  this  traffic 
as  "  domestic  piracy,'7  and  named  some  men  engaged 
in  it,  among  them  a  vessel-owner  of  his  own  town  of 
RTewburyport.  This  man  immediately  had  Garrison 

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Philanthropists  and  Reformers 

arrested  for  "  gross  and  malicious  libel/7  he  was 
found  guilty,  fined  fifty  dollars  and  costs,  and  as 
there  was  no  one  to  pay  this,  was  thrown  into 
prison. 

Garrison  took  his  imprisonment  calmly  enough, 
but  his  old  friend,  John  G.  Whittier,  was  deeply 
distressed  and  appealed  to  Henry  Clay  to  secure  the 
release  of  the  "  guiltless  prisoner."  This  Clay  would 
probably  have  done,  but  he  was  anticipated  by  an 
other  friend  of  Garrison's,  Arthur  Tappan,  of  New 
York,  who  sent  the  money  to  pay  the  fine,  and  the 
young  agitator  was  free  again,  after  an  imprison 
ment  of  forty-nine  days.  He  had  not  been  idle 
while  in  prison,  but  had  prepared  a  series  of  lec 
tures  on  slavery,  which  he  proceeded  at  once  to  de 
liver.  Then,  on  the  first  day  of  January,  1831,  he 
began  in  Boston  the  publication  of  a  weekly  paper 
called  the  "  Liberator/'  which  he  continued  for  thir 
ty-five  years,  until  its  fight  was  won  and  slavery  was 
abolished. 

How  well  that  fight  was  waged  history  has  shown. 
In  his  first  number  he  announced :  "  I  will  be  as 
harsh  as  truth  and  as  uncompromising  as  justice. 
On  this  subject  I  do  not  wish  to  think,  to  speak,  or 
write  with  moderation.  No !  No !  Tell  the  man 
whose  home  is  on  fire  to  give  a  moderate  alarm ;  tell 
the  mother  to  gradually  extricate  her  babe  from  the 
fire  into  which  it  has  fallen ;  but  urge  me  not  to  use 
moderation  in  a  cause  like  the  present.  I  am  in 
earnest — I  will  not  equivocate — I  will  not  excuse — 
I  will  not  retreat  a  single  inch — and  I  will  be  heard." 

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And  heard  he  was.  The  whole  land  was  soon 
filled  with  excitement;  the  apathy  of  years  was 
broken.  From  the  south  came  hundreds  of  letters 
threatening  him  with  death  if  he  did  not  desist,  and 
the  state  of  Georgia  offered  a  reward  of  $5,000  for 
his  apprehension.  In  the  north,  anti-slavery  socie 
ties  were  formed  everywhere,  and  the  movement  grew 
with  great  rapidity,  in  spite  of  powerful  efforts  to 
crush  it.  There  were  riots  everywhere.  Garrison 
was  dragged  through  the  streets  of  Boston  with  a 
rope  around  his  body  and  his  life  was  saved  only  by 
lodging  him  in  jail;  Elijah  Love  joy  was  slain  at  Al 
ton,  Illinois,  while  defending  his  press;  Marius  Rob 
inson,  an  anti-slavery  lecturer,  was  tarred  and  feath 
ered  in  Mahoning  County,  Ohio ;  in  the  cities  of  the 
south,  mobs  broke  into  the  postoffice  and  made  bon 
fires  of  anti-slavery  papers  and  pamphlets  found 
there.  Quarrels  and  dissension  in  the  anti-slavery 
ranks  developed  in  time,  but  when  the  Civil  War  was 
over,  the  leaders  of  the  Republican  party  united 
with  Garrison's  friends  in  raising  for  him  the  sum 
of  $30,000,  and  after  his  death  the  city  of  Boston 
raised  a  statue  to  his  memory.  Perhaps  no  better 
estimate  of  him  has  ever  been  made  than  that  of  John 
A.  Andrew,  war  governor  of  Massachusetts : 

"  The  generation  which  preceded  ours  regarded 
him  only  as  a  wild  enthusiast,  a  fanatic,  or  a  public 
enemy.  The  present  generation  sees  in  him  the  bold 
and  honest  reformer,  the  man  of  original,  self -poised,, 
heroic  will,  inspired  by  a  vision  of  universal  justice, 
made  actual  in  the  practice  of  nations;  who,  daring 

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to  attack  without  reserve  the  worst  and  most  power 
ful  oppression  of  his  country  and  his  time,  has  out 
lived  the  giant  wrong  he  assailed,  and  has  triumphed 
over  the  sophistries  by  which  it  was  maintained." 

Closely  second  to  Garrison  in  the  awakening  of  the 
public  conscience  to  the  enormities  of  slavery  was 
Theodore  Parker,  one  of  the  purest,  most  self-sacrific 
ing  and  interesting  of  personalities.  lie  came  of  good 
stock.  His  grandfather,  John  Parker,  commanded  the 
little  company  of  minute-men  who  held  the  bridge  at 
Lexington  on  that  fateful  nineteenth  of  April,  1775 ; 
tis  father  a  farmer,  and  Theodore  himself  the  young 
est  of  eleven  children.  The  family  was  poor  and  the 
"boy  was  brought  up  to  hard  labor,  with  short  inter 
vals  of  schooling  now  and  then.  But  his  thirst  for 
knowledge  seems  to  have  been  insatiable,  and  he  read 
everything  he  could  lay  his  hands  on,  even  to  transla 
tions  of  Homer  and  Plutarch  and  Eollin's  "  Ancient 
History."  A  century  ago,  a  book  was  a  far  greater 
treasure  than  it  is  to-day,  when  their  very  number 
has  made  us  in  a  way  contemptuous  of  them;  and 
the  few  which  young  Parker  could  secure  were  read 
and  re-read  and  learned  through  and  through.  His 
memory  was  amazing,  and  at  the  age  of  twenty  he 
walked  from  his  home  in  Lexington  to  Cambridge, 
took  the  entrance  examination  for  Harvard  College, 
passed  with  honors,  and,  walking  home  again,  told 
his  unsuspecting  father,  then  in  bed,  of  his  success. 
He  could  not  be  spared  from  the  farm,  however,  nor 
was  there  any  money  to  pay  for  his  maintenance  at 
Cambridge,  so  he  continued  working  on  the  farm, 

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keeping  up  with  his  class  by  studying  in  the  even 
ings  and  going  to  Cambridge  only  to  take  the  ex 
aminations. 

He  undertook  teaching  after  that,  and  gradually 
worked  his  way  toward  the  ministry,  to  which  he  was 
admitted  in  1837.  He  was  soon  called  to  Boston, 
to  a  congregation  independent  of  sectarian  bonds, 
and  here  he  reached  the  culmination  of  his  fame, 
attracting  the  most  cultured  people  of  the  city  by  his 
breadth  of  knowledge,  warmth  of  feeling  and  inten 
sity  of  conviction.  His  interest  in  slavery  began 
early,  and  by  1845,  his  share  in  the  anti-slavery 
struggle  had  become  engrossing.  He  threw  himself 
into  it  heart  and  soul,  and  no  one  did  more  to 
awaken  the  conscience  of  the  north.  His  speeches, 
letters,  sermons,  tracts  and  lectures  had  an  immense 
influence;  he  took  an  active  part  in  aiding  runaway 
slaves  to  get  to  Canada,  and  his  labors  were  inces 
sant  and  prodigious.  His  health  at  last  gave  way, 
and  the  end  came  in  1860,  at  Florence,  Italy,  where 
he  lies  buried. 

Parker's  immense  influence  was  due  to  the  brain 
rather  than  to  the  heart.  He  possessed  no  grace  of 
person,  music  of  voice,  or  charm  of  manner,  none  of 
that  fascination  which  is  a  part  of  the  great  orator. 
He  was  a  white-hot  flame  which  scorched  and  seared, 
an  intellect  pure  and  piercing,  a  self-made  instru 
ment  to  expose  the  shams  of  society. 

Closely  associated  with  Garrison  and  Parker  in 
the  fight  against  slavery,  and  in  some  ways  more  fa 
mous  than  either,  was  Wendell  Phillips.  The  very 

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opposite  of  Parker,  handsome  in  person,  cultivated 
in  manner,  with  a  charm  of  personality  seldom 
equalled, — the  two  yet  worked  hand  in  hand  for  a 
common  cause,  the  one,  as  it  were,  supplementing  the 
other. 

Wendell  Phillips  was  the  son  of  John  Phillips,  the 
first  mayor  of  Boston,  and  was  a  year  younger  than 
Theodore  Parker.  He  went  the  way  of  all  well-to- 
do  Boston  youth  through  Harvard,  graduating  there 
in  1831,  without  distinguishing  himself  particularly, 
except  by  his  skill  in  debate  and  his  finished  elocu 
tion.  During  one  of  the  revivals  of  religion  which 
followed  the  settlement  of  Dr.  Lyman  Beecher  at 
Boston,  he  became  a  convert,  and  this  marked  the  be 
ginning  of  his  interest  in  the  great  moral  question 
of  the  day,  slavery.  It  soon  became  overwhelming, 
and  was  given  point  and  passion  by  a  spectacle  which 
he  witnessed  on  October  21,  1835. 

He  had  studied  for  the  law,  been  admitted  to  the 
bar,  and  opened  an  office,  and  looking  from  his  office 
window  on  that  October  day,  he  saw  a  mob  break  up 
an  anti-slavery  meeting  on  the  street  below,  pull 
William  Lloyd  Garrison  off  the  platform,  tear  his 
clothes  from  his  back,  throw  a  rope  around  him  and 
drag  him  through  the  streets,  ready  to  hang  him, 
and  prevented  from  doing  so  only  by  a  ruse  of  the 
mayor,  who  got  Garrison  into  the  jail  and  locked 
him  up  for  safety.  That  spectacle  moved  the  young 
lawyer  through  and  through,  and  from  that  moment 
he  was  an  avowed  Abolitionist. 

"  If  clients  do  not  come,"  he  had  said  to  a  friend 
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a  short  time  before,  "  I  will  throw  myself  heart  and 
soul  into  some  good  cause  and  devote  my  life  to  it." 

Clients  would  have  come,  no  doubt,  but  the  good 
cause  came  first.  His  opportunity  came  in  183 7r 
when  Elijah  Love  joy  was  murdered  by  a  mob  at  Al 
ton,  Illinois,  for  publishing  an  anti-slavery  paper. 
Phillips,  stirred  with  indignation,  arranged  for  a  pub 
lic  meeting  at  Faneuil  Hall,  and  was  of  course  pres 
ent,  but  with  no  expectation  of  speaking.  Dr.  Chan- 
ning  made  an  impressive  address,  and  one  or  two 
others  followed,  when  James  T.  Austin,  attorney- 
general  of  the  state,  and  bitterly  opposed  to  the  anti- 
slavery  agitation,  arose.  He  eulogized  the  Alton  mur 
derers,  comparing  them  with  the  patriots  of  the  Rev 
olution,  and  declared  that  Love  joy  had  "  died  as  the 
fool  dieth."  Some  instinct  led  the  chair  to  call  upon 
Wendell  Phillips  to  reply.  He  consented,  and  as  he 
stepped  upon  the  platform  won  instant  admiration  by 
his  dignity,  his  self-possession,  and  his  manly  beauty. 

"Mr.  Chairman,"  he  began,  "when I  heard  the  gen 
tleman  who  has  just  spoken  lay  down  principles  which 
placed  the  rioters,  incendiaries,  and  murderers  of  Al 
ton  side  by  side  with  Otis  and  Hancock,  with  Quincy 
and  Adams,  I  thought  those  pictured  lips  [pointing 
to  the  portraits  in  the  hall]  would  have  broken  into 
voice,  to  rebuke  the  recreant  American,  the  slanderer 
of  the  dead.  Sir,  for  the  sentiments  he  has  uttered 
on  soil  consecrated  by  the  prayers  of  Puritans  and 
the  blood  of  patriots,  the  earth  should  have  yawned 
and  s\vallowed  him  up." 

The  effect  of  the  whole  speech  was  tremendous.  At 
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Philanthropists  and  Reformers 

last  the  abolitionists  had  found  a  champion  equal  to 
the  best,  and  from  that  hour  to  the  end  of  the  anti- 
slavery  conflict,  he  was  foremost  in  the  fight.  He  ac 
cepted  without  reservation  the  doctrines  which  Gar 
rison  had  formulated:  that  slavery  was  under  all 
circumstances  a  sin  and  that  immediate  emancipa 
tion  was  a  fundamental  right  and  duty.  Up  and 
down  the  land,  obeying  every  call  so  far  as  his 
strength  would  permit,  he  travelled,  lecturing  against 
slavery,  asking  no  pecuniary  reward.  He  was  soon 
a  great  popular  favorite — the  greatest,  perhaps,  who 
ever  mounted  a  lecture  platform  in  America, — and 
gained  a  hearing  in  quarters  where,  before,  abolition 
ists  had  been  hated  and  derided.  His  tact  in  winning 
over  a  turbulent  audience  was  extraordinary;  the 
strongest  opponents  of  the  anti-slavery  cause  felt  the 
spell  of  his  power,  and  often  confessed  the  justice 
of  his  arguments. 

When  that  fight  was  won  and  the  negro  had  gained 
Ids  freedom,  Wendell  Phillips  remained  the  foremost 
critic  of  public  men  and  measures  in  America,  and 
year  after  year,  he  devoted  his  great  gifts  to  guid 
ing  popular  opinion.  A  champion  of  temperance,  of 
the  rights  of  labor,  of  the  Indians,  of  equal  suffrage, 
he  stood  forth  until  his  death  an  inspiring  and  au 
gust  figure — a  man  who  devoted  his  life  wholly  to 
the  welfare  of  his  country. 

One  of  the  reforms  which  Wendell  Phillips  advo 
cated  was  that  of  woman  suffrage,  but  this  movement 
has  come  to  be  particularly  associated  with  the  name 
of  Susan  B.  Anthony.  Like  her  great  predecessor  in 

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that  cause,  Lucretia  Mott,  Miss  Anthony  was  a 
Quaker,  and  the  Quakers,  it  should  be  remembered, 
made  no  distinction  of  sex  when  it  came  to  speaking 
in  their  meeting-houses.  Her  father  was  well-to-do, 
and  she  received  a  careful  education,  and  in  1847, 
first  spoke  in  public.  The  temperance  movement  ab 
sorbed  her  energies  at  first;  then  the  Abolitionist 
cause;  and  finally  the  work  of  securing  equal  civil 
rights  for  women.  During  the  winter  of  1854,  she 
held  woman  suffrage  meetings  in  every  county  in 
New  York  State,  and  the  remainder  of  her  life  was 
devoted  to  this  cause. 

Her  most  prominent  co-worker  was  Elizabeth 
Cady  Stanton,  whose  inspiration  came  directly  from 
Lucretia  Mott,  whom  she  met  in  1840,  and  with 
whom  she  joined,  eight  years  later,  in  issuing  a  call 
for  the  first  woman's  suffrage  convention.  The  con 
vention  was  held  at  Mrs.  Stanton's  home  at  Seneca 
Falls,  New  York,  and  from  that  time  forward,  she 
devoted  herself  entirely  to  lecturing  and  writing 
upon  the  subject.  That  the  cause  of  woman  suffrage 
has  made  so  little  headway  is  certainly  not  because 
of  a  lack  of  devoted  and  accomplished  advocates ;  it 
seems  rather  to  be  due  to  the  fact  that  it  has  not  yet 
succeeded  in  winning  over  the  great  body  of  women, 
who  have  held  aloof  and  viewed  the  movement  with 
indifference,  if  not  with  suspicion. 

We  cannot  close  this  consideration  of  the  anti- 
slavery  movement  without  some  reference  to  that 
strange  fanatic,  John  Brown,  who  headed  a  forlorn 

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Philanthropists  and  Keformers 

hope  and  gave  up  his  life  for  an  idea.  It  was  the 
custom  at  one  time  to  consider  John  Brown  a  saint, 
at  the  north,  and  a  very  emissary  of  Satan,  at  the 
south.  One  estimate  was  as  untrue  as  the  other. 
He  was  merely  a  misguided  old  man,  grown  a  little 
mad,  perhaps,  from  long  brooding  over  one  subject. 

He  was  born  at  Torrington,  Connecticut,  in  1800, 
his  father  being  a  shoemaker  and  tanner,  who,  five 
years  later,  moved  to  Hudson,  Ohio,  then  a  mere  out 
post  in  the  wilderness.  He  was  soon  expert  in 
woodcraft,  and  he  relates  how,  when  he  was  six 
years  old,  an  Indian  boy  gave  him  a  yellow  marble, 
the  first  he  had  ever  seen,  and  which  he  treasured  for 
a  long  time.  He  had  little  or  no  schooling,  and  a 
project  to  educate  him  for  the  ministry  was  cut 
short  by  an  inflammation  of  the  eyes.  He  grew  up 
into  a  tall,  handsome  man,  headstrong,  but  humane 
and  kind,  and  easily  moved  to  tears.  He  married 
young  and  had  many  children,  for  some  of  whom  a 
tragic  fate  was  waiting. 

He  soon  became  interested  in  the  anti-slavery 
movement,  and,  by  1837,  was  so  absorbed  by  it  that 
he  made  his  family  take  a  solemn  oath  of  active  op 
position  to  slavery.  Ten  years  later,  he  unfolded  to 
Frederick  Douglass  a  plan  for  a  negro  insurrection 
in  the  Virginia  mountains,  but  nothing  came  of  it. 
From  that  time  forward,  the  project  seems  to  have 
slumbered  at  the  back  of  his  mind,  and  he  grew  more 
and  more  certain  that  the  only  way  to  end  slavery 
was  to  arm  the  blacks  and  encourage  them  to  fight 
for  freedom.  In  1854,  his  sons  emigrated  to  Kansas, 

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then  in  the  throes  of  civil  war  over  the  slavery  ques 
tion,  and  their  father  busied  himself  raising  money 
to  send  arms  and  ammunition  into  the  troubled 
state.  Finally,  in  September,  1855,  he  himself  re 
moved  to  Kansas,  became  the  captain  of  a  band  of 
Free  State  Rangers,  took  part  in  the  fight  at  Law 
rence,  and  in  some  other  affairs,  and  then,  proceed 
ing  to  the  shores  of  Pottawatomie  creek,  where  sev 
eral  pro-slavery  men  lived,  seized  five  of  them  and 
put  them  to  death. 

For  this  deed  he  never  experienced  any  compunc 
tion  ;  he  believed  that  he  was  directed  by  Providence 
in  these  "  executions,"  as  he  called  them,  and  after 
they  were  over,  he  held  divine  services.  His  fearful 
deed  sent  a  thrill  of  horror  through  the  country,  and 
Brown  and  his  sons  became  marked  men.  Their 
Louses  were  burned,  and  one  of  the  sons  went  insane 
from  brooding  over  the  father's  deed.  Brown  him 
self  was  charged  with  murder,  treason  and  conspir 
acy,  and  a  price  put  on  his  head,  but  no  one  at 
tempted  to  arrest  him.  Another  of  his  sons  was  soon 
afterwards  shot  and  killed  by  pro-slavery  men  and 
Brown,  hastily  collecting  a  small  force,  attacked  the 
marauders,  and  killed  or  wounded  many  of  them, 
himself  being  injured  by  a  spent  rifle  ball.  The  fight 
was  known  as  "  the  battle  of  Osawatomie,"  and 
Brown  was  thereafterwards  known  as  "  Osawa- 
tomie  "  Brown. 

But  the  fight  in  Kansas  was  about  won,  and 
Brown  again  took  up  the  idea  of  a  slave  insurrection. 
He  went  to  Boston  to  raise  the  necessary  money,  and 


Philanthropists  and  Reformers 

succeeded  in  getting  it  without  much  trouble,  though 
most  of  the  people  who  gave  it  to  him  had  only  the 
haziest  kind  of  an  idea  of  what  it  was  he  proposed 
to  do.  He  bought  rifles  and  ammunition,  and  also 
had  a  thousand  pikes  made  with  which  to  arm  the 
negroes,  who,  of  course,  would  not  know  how  to  use 
the  rifle.  Then  he  got  together  a  band  of  young 
men,  secured  a  military  instructor;  and  on  July  3, 
1859,  he  appeared  at  Harper's  Ferry,  Virginia, 
hired  a  small  farm  near  there,  and  quietly  assembled 
his  men  and  munitions. 

Harper's  Ferry  had  been  selected  because  there 
was  a  well-equipped  arsenal  there  which  would  fur 
nish  the  arms  and  munitions  which  he  had  been  un 
able  to  buy,  and  would  also  serve  as  a  base  of  opera 
tions.  Brown  intended  to  proceed  to  the  mountains, 
gathering  up  the  slaves  as  he  went,  and  establish 
headquarters  in  some  strong  position,  where  he  could 
drill  his  forces  and  prepare  for  a  raid  on  the  rest 
of  the  state.  He  believed  the  slaves  would  flock  to 
him,  and  that  he  would  soon  be  at  the  head  of  a 
great  army.  He  tried  to  get  Frederick  Douglass  to 
join  him,  but  Douglass  refused,  and,  at  last,  on  the 
night  of  Sunday,  October  16,  1859,  at  the  head  of 
a  little  band  of  twenty-two  men,  whites  and  negroes, 
he  moved  on  the  arsenal.  They  reached  the  covered 
bridge  over  the  Potomac  without  adventure,  crossed 
until  they  were  near  the  Virginia  side,  seized  the 
solitary  sentinel  who  challenged  them,  broke  down 
the  armory  gate  with  a  sledge  hammer,  seized  the 
remainder  of  the  guard,  and  a  few  citizens,  who  afr- 

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tempted  to  interfere,  and  were  soon  firmly  in  posses 
sion  of  not  only  the  arsenal,  but  also  the  little  town. 

Meanwhile,  the  country  round  about  was  arming, 
and  by  noon,  of  Monday,  Brown  was  so  surrounded 
that  he  could  not  escape.  Why  he  had  not  got  away 
to  the  mountains  in  the  morning,  as  he  had  intended 
doing,  no  one  knows.  The  Virginia  militia  gathered, 
and  in  the  early  evening,  a  company  of  United 
States  marines  arrived  from  Washington,  under 
command  of  Colonel  Robert  E.  Lee  and  Lieutenant 
J.  E.  B.  Stuart.  They  soon  found  out  how  small 
Brown's  force  was,  carried  the  arsenal  by  assault, 
and  took  Brown  and  the  survivors  of  his  little  band 
prisoners.  Brown's  two  sons  were  dead,  as  were 
seven  others  of  his  followers,  and  seven  more  had 
succeeded  in  escaping,  though  two  were  afterwards 
captured. 

The  rest  is  soon  told.  Brown  was  swiftly  tried 
and  convicted  of  "  treason  and  conspiring  and  ad 
vising  with  slaves  and  others  to  rebel,  and  of  murder 
in  the  first  degree,"  was  sentenced  to  death,  and  was 
hanged  on  December  2,  1859.  The  affair  made  the 
South  wild  with  rage  and  apprehension,  for  a  slave 
insurrection  was  a  thing  to  be  trembled  at,  and 
Brown's  execution  similarly  affected  his  friends  at 
the  North.  He  had  once  remarked,  "  I  am  worth  a 
good  deal  more  to  hang  than  for  any  other  purpose," 
and  this  was,  in  a  sense,  true,  for  in  the  words  of 
the  great  marching  song  of  the  Northern  armies  dur 
ing  the  war  which  followed,  "  his  soul  was  marching 


on." 


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Another  branch  of  philanthropy  with  which  the 
name  of  a  woman  is  closely  identified  is  that  of  car 
ing  for  the  wounded  and  destitute  in  time  of  war  or 
disaster,  and  the  woman  is  Clara  Barton.  Born  in 
Massachusetts  about  1830,  she  started  in  life  as  a 
school-teacher,  but  in  1854  secured  a  position  in  the 
patent  office  at  Washington,  where  she  remained  un 
til  the  opening  of  the  Civil  War.  The  sight  of  the 
suffering  in  the  Washington  hospitals  revealed  to  her 
her  real  vocation,  and  she  determined  to  devote  her 
self  to  the  care  of  wounded  soldiers  on  the  battle 
field.  This  work  of  mercy  was  one  that  carried  with 
it  a  wide  appeal,  and  she  soon  secured  influential 
backing  and  support. 

Her  work  was  so  effective  that  in  1864,  she  was 
appointed  "  lady  in  charge  "  of  the  hospitals  at  the 
front  of  the  Army  of  the  James,  and  in  the  follow 
ing  year  was  sent  to  Andersonville,  Georgia,  to  iden 
tify  and  mark  the  graves  of  the  Union  soldiers 
buried  there.  Soon  afterwards  she  was  placed  by 
President  Lincoln  in  charge  of  the  search  for  miss 
ing  men  of  the  Union  armies — a  work  of  the  first 
importance,  to  which  she  devoted  all  her  energies, 
and  which  she  carried  on  for  some  years  after 
the  war  closed,  raising  the  necessary  money  by  lec 
tures  and  appeals  for  donations.  Thousands  of 
families  at  the  North  have  reason  to  thank  her 
for  definite  knowledge  as  to  the  fate  of  their  loved 
ones. 

Her  health  broke  down  under  the  strain,  at  last, 
and  she  went  for  a  rest  to  Switzerland,  but  the  out- 

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break  of  the  Franco-German  war,  in  1870,  called  her 
again  to  duty,  assisting  the  grand  duchess  of  Baden 
in  the  preparation  of  military  hospitals,  and  giving 
the  Red  Cross  Society  the  benefit  of  her  experience. 
In  1871,  at  the  request  of  the  German  authorities, 
she  superintended  the  supplying  of  work  to  the  poor 
of  Strashurg,  after  that  city  had  been  reduced  by 
siege;  and  after  the  fall  of  Paris,  she  was  placed 
in  charge  of  the  distribution  of  supplies  to  the  desti 
tute  of  that  great  city.  At  the  close  of  the  war,  she 
was  decorated  with  the  golden  cross  of  Baden  and 
the  iron  cross  of  Germany. 

Although  the  Red  Cross  societies  in  Europe  had 
been  established  as  early  as  1863,  and  an  interna 
tional  organization  completed  six  years  later,  the 
society  was  not  officially  recognized  by  the  United 
States  until  1882.  The  American  Association  of 
the  Red  Cross  was  at  once  organized,  and  Miss  Bar 
ton  chosen  its  president,  a  position  which  she  held 
without  opposition  for  many  years.  Its  object  as 
stated  by  its  constitution  is  "  to  organize  a  system  of 
national  relief  and  apply  the  same  in  mitigating 
suffering  caused  by  war,  pestilence,  famine  and  other 
calamities."  Since  then,  every  such  occasion  has 
found  the  society  in  the  forefront  of  relief  work,  and 
it  has  distributed  many  millions  in  assuaging  human 
suffering. 

Still  another  great  reform,  ridiculed  at  first,  but 
now  recognized  as  one  of  the  most  beneficent  move 
ments  of  the  age  is  associated  with  a  single  name. 

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The  reform  is  the  protection  of  dumb  animals,  and 
the  name  is  that  of  Henry  Bergh. 

Born  in  !New  York  City  in  1823,  the  son  of  a 
wealthy  ship-builder  and  inheriting  his  father's  for-* 
tune  at  the  age  of  twenty,  Henry  Bergh,  after  spend 
ing  some  years  in  Europe,  a  portion  of  them  in  the 
diplomatic  service  of  the  United  States,  returned 
to  this  country,  determined  to  devote  the  remainder 
of  his  life  to  the  interests  of  animals. 

It  was  a  new  idea  which  he  presented  to  the  pub 
lic,  met  at  first  with  indifference,  then  with  ridicule 
and  opposition.  But  as  a  bold  worker  in  the  streets 
of  ISTewYork,by  a  relentless  activity  in  carrying  cases 
of  ill-treatment  of  animals  to  the  courts,  and  an  elo 
quent  advocacy  of  his  cause  on  the  floor  of  the  legis 
lature,  he  soon  won  friends  and  support,  as  every 
great  cause  is  bound  to  do,  and  finally  succeeded  in 
so  winning  over  public  sentiment  that,  in  1866,  the 
legislature  passed  the  laws  which  he  had  preparedr 
creating  the  Society  for  the  Prevention  of  Cruelty  to 
Animals,  with  himself  as  president.  He  gave  not 
only  his  time,  but  his  property  to  the  work,  and  soon 
had  the  society  in  a  prosperous  condition,  with 
branches  forming  in  other  cities.  Indeed,  the  idea 
which  he  fostered  has  spread  to  the  whole  country, 
and  nowhere  may  animals  be  mistreated  with  im 
punity.  The  idea  that  man  is  responsible  not  only 
for  the  happiness  of  his  fellows,  but  for  the  well- 
being  of  his  beasts  marks  a  long  stride  forward  in 
ethics. 

Bergh's  influence,  indeed,  extended  beyond  this 
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country.  Not  only  did  practically  every  state  in  the 
Union  enact  the  laws  for  the  protection  of  animals 
which  he  had  procured  from  the  state  of  New  York, 
but  Brazil,  the  Argentine  Eepublic,  and  many  other 
foreign  countries  did  likewise.  In  1874,  Bergh  res 
cued  a  little  girl  from  inhuman  treatment,  and  this 
led  to  the  formation  of  the  Society  for  the  Preven 
tion  of  Cruelty  to  Children,  which  has  also  done  a 
great  work. 

No  doubt  before  Bergh's  time,  there  were  many 
people  who  were  pained  to  see  either  children  or  ani 
mals  mistreated  and  who  passed  by  with  averted  eyes. 
Bergh  did  not  pass  by.  He  made  it  his  business,  in 
the  first  place,  to  secure  adequate  laws  for  the  pun 
ishment  of  cruelty,  and  in  the  second  place,  to  pro 
vide  means  for  the  enforcement  of  those  laws. 

There  are  many  of  us  to-day  who  are  shocked  at 
the  injustice  and  suffering  in  the  world,  and  who 
would  welcome  its  regeneration.  But  wishing  for 
a  thing  never  got  it.  Nor  does  philanthropy  con 
sist  merely  in  wishing  men  well.  It  means  labor 
and  self-sacrifice,  and  frequently  obloquy  and  mis 
understanding.  The  reward  of  the  reformer  is  usu 
ally  a  stone  and  a  sneer,  if  nothing  worse.  But  when 
a  man's  heart  is  in  the  work,  stones  and  sneers  seem 
only  to  spur  him  on.  They  are  like  wind  to  a 
flame,  fanning  it  white-hot.  And  it  is  a  wonder 
ful  commentary  on  the  essential  goodness  of  human 
nature  that  never  yet,  in  the  history  of  mankind, 
has  a  real  and  needed  reform  failed,  in  the  end,  of 
success. 

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Among  latter-day  clergymen  in  America,  none  has 
achieved  a  wider  reputation  or  a  greater  personal 
popularity  than  Phillips  Brooks.  Born  in  Boston  in 
1835,  a  graduate  of  Harvard,  ordained  to  the  Episco 
pal  ministry  at  the  age  of  twenty-four,  and  ten 
years  later  called  to  the  rectorship  of  Trinity  church, 
Boston,  it  was  in  this  latter  field,  which  he  would 
never  leave,  that  he  showed  himself  to  be  one  of  the 
strongest  personalities  and  noblest  preachers  of  his 
age.  Xo  more  striking  figure  ever  appeared  in  a 
pulpit.  Of  magnificent  physique,  with  a  striking 
and  massive  head  and  handsome  countenance,  breath 
ing  the  very  spirit  of  youth,  in  spite  of  his  grey  hair, 
he  had  the  interest  and  attention  of  any  audience  be 
fore  he  opened  his  lips. 

Phillips  Brooks  has  been  compared  to  Henry 
Ward  Beecher,  and  in  many  things  they  were  alike. 
But  the  former's  culture,  while  perhaps  less  varied 
than  Beecher's,  was  deeper  and  richer,  his  sermons 
were  less  brilliant  but  cast  in  better  form,  his  ap 
peal  was  narrower  but  to  a  far  more  influential  class. 
He  was,  in  a  word,  the  preacher  of  the  intellectual. 
No  one  who  heard  him  preach  ever  failed  to  be 
startled  at  first  by  his  tremendous  rapidity  of  delivery 
— averaging  two  hundred  words  a  minute — or  failed 
to  find  himself,  at  first,  lagging  behind  the  equal 
rapidity  of  thought.  But  once  accustomed  to  these 
— once  realizing  that,  in  listening  to  him  there  could 
be  no  inattention  or  wandering  of  wits — his  sermon 
became  a  source  of  keenest  intellectual  delight  and 
noblest  spiritual  inspiration. 

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Phillips  Brooks  often  said  that  he  had  to  preacK 
rapidly,  or  not  at  all.  In  youth  he  had  suffered  from 
something  resembling  an  impediment  in  his  speech, 
and  more  measured  utterance  gave  it  a  chance  to 
recur.  Certainly,  no  one  who  ever  listened  to  his 
fluent  and  limpid  utterance  would  have  suspected  it. 
But  he  was  far  more  than  a  great  preacher.  By  his 
broad  tolerance,  his  lofty  character  and  immense 
personal  influence,  he  became,  in  a  way,  a  national 
figure,  the  common  property  of  the  nation  which  felt 
itself  the  richer  for  possessing  him.  A  gracious  and 
courtly  figure,  with  a  heart  as  wide  as  the  human 
race,  he  lives,  somehow,  as  the  true  type  of  clergy 
man,  whose  concern  is  humanity  and  whose  field  the 
world. 

Which  brings  us  to  the  life  of  the  last  man  we 
shall  consider  in  this  chapter,  a  man  the  opposite 
in  many  ways  of  the  great  clergyman  whose  career 
we  have  just  noted,  and  yet,  like  him,  of  broadest 
sympathies  and  most  sincere  convictions;  a  man 
whose  life  was  more  picturesque,  whose  battle  against 
fate  was  harder,  and  whose  achievement  was  even 
more  remarkable — the  greatest  evangelist  the  mod 
ern  world  has  ever  produced,  Dwight  L.  Moody. 
If  ever  a  man  labored  for  his  fellow-men,  he 
did,  and  the  story  of  his  life  reads  almost  like  a 
romance. 

He  was  born  at  Northfield,  Massachusetts,  in 
1837,  the  son  of  a  stone-mason,  who,  disheartened 
and  worn  out  by  business  reverses,  died  when  the 
boy  was  only  four  years  old.  There  were  nine  chil- 

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dren,  the  oldest  only  fifteen,  and  when  the  father's 
creditors  came  and  took  every  possession  they  had 
in  the  world,  the  future  looked  dark  indeed.  The 
mother  was  urged  to  place  the  children  in  various 
homes,  but  she  managed  to  keep  them  together  by 
doing  housework  for  the  neighbors  and  tilling  a  little 
garden. 

As  soon  as  he  was  old  enough,  D wight  was  put  to 
work  on  a  farm,  but  his  earnings  were  small,  and 
finally,  when  he  was  seventeen,  he  started  for  Boston 
to  look  for  something  better.  He  managed  to  get  a 
position  in  a  shoe-store,  and  there  came  under  the 
influence  of  Edward  Kimball,  who  persuaded  him 
to  become  a  Christian  and  to  join  a  church.  But  he 
was  not  admitted  to  membership  for  nearly  a  year; 
so  poor  was  his  command  of  language  and  so  awk 
ward  his  sentences  that  it  was  doubted  if  he  under 
stood  Christianity  at  all,  and  even  when  he  was  ad 
mitted,  the  committee  stated  that  they  thought  him 
"  very  unlikely  ever  to  become  a  Christian  of  clear 
and  decided  views  of  gospel  truth;  still  less  to  fill  any 
extended  sphere  of  public  usefulness."  How  blind, 
indeed,  we  often  are  to  the  possibilities  in  human 
nature ! 

At  the  age  of  nineteen,  Dwight  removed  to  Chi 
cago,  secured  another  position  as  shoe-salesman,  and 
offered  his  services  to  a  mission  school  as  a  teacher. 
His  appearance  made  anything  but  a  favorable  im 
pression,  but  finally  he  was  told  that  he  might  teach 
provided  he  brought  his  own  scholars.  The  next 
Sunday  he  walked  in  at  the  head  of  a  score  of  raga- 

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muffins  he  had  gathered  up  along  the  wharves.  The 
divine  fire  seems  to  have  been  working  in  him; 
he  was  finding  words  with  wrhich  to  express  himself, 
and  burning  for  a  wider  field.  So  he  rented  a  room 
in  the  slum  districts  which  had  been  used  as  a  saloon 
and  opened  a  Sunday  school  there.  It  was  an  im 
mense  success,  soon  outgrew  the  little  room,  and  was 
removed  to  a  large  hall,  where,  every  Sunday,  a 
thousand  boys  and  girls  attended.  For  six  years, 
Moody  conducted  that  school,  sweeping  it  out  and 
doing  the  janitor  work  himself,  attending  to  his  busi 
ness  as  salesman  throughout  the  week.  But  in  1860, 
at  the  age  of  twenty-three,  he  decided  to  devote  all 
his  time  to  Christian  work. 

He  had  no  income,  and  to  keep  his  expenses  as  low 
as  possible,  he  slept  at  night  on  a  bench  in  his  school, 
and  cooked  his  own  food.  Then  the  Civil  War  be 
gan,  and  he  erected  a  tent  at  the  camp  near  Chicago 
where  the  recruits  were  gathered,  and  labored  there 
all  day,  sometimes  holding  eight  or  ten  meetings. 
He  went  with  the  men  to  the  front,  and  was  at  the 
desperate  battles  of  Shiloh,  Murfreesboro,  and  Chat 
tanooga.  The  war  over,  he  took  up  again  his  work 
in  Chicago.  The  great  fire  of  1871  swept  away  his 
church,  but  he  soon  had  a  temporary  structure 
erected,  and  labored  on. 

By  this  time,  his  fame  had  got  abroad,  and  finally 
in  1873,  his  great  opportunity  came.  Accompanied 
by  Ira  D.  Sankey,  the  famous  singer  of  hymns,  he 
started  on  an  evangelist  tour  of  Great  Britain.  At 
his  first  meeting  only  four  people  were  present;  at 

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his  last,  thirty  thousand  crowded  to  hear  him.  In 
Ireland,  the  crowds  sometimes  covered  six  acres,  and 
during  the  four  months  he  spent  in  London,  over  two 
million  people  heard  him  preach.  Great  Britain  had 
never  hefore  experienced  such  a  religious  awaken 
ing  ;  but  it  was  as  nothing  to  the  reception  given  him 
when  he  returned  to  America  two  years  later.  There 
are  many  people  still  living  who  rememher  those 
wonderful  revivals  in  Philadelphia,  New  York,  and 
Boston,  with  their  great  choirs,  and  Ira  Sankey's 
singing,  and  Moody's  soul-stirring  talks.  From  that 
time  forward  he  was  easily  the  first  evangelist  in 
the  world — perhaps  the  greatest  the  world  had  ever 
seen. 

It  is  douhtful  if  any  man  ever  faced  and  preached 
to  so  many  people.  He  spoke  to  thousands  night 
after  night,  week  in  and  week  out.  In  his  themes  he 
kept  close  to  life,  and  few  men  were  his  equal  in 
making  scriptural  biography  vivid  and  realistic;  in 
reconstructing  scriptural  scenes  and  setting  them,  as 
it  were,  bodily  before  his  audience.  He  was  not  a 
cultured  man,  as  we  understand  the  word — not  a 
man  of  broad  learning ;  perhaps  such  learning  would 
only  have  weakened  him — nor  did  he  have  the  pres 
ence  and  voice  which  go  so  far  toward  the  equipment 
of  the  orator.  But  he  burned  with  an  intense  con 
viction,  and  his  sermons  were  so  free  from  art,  so 
direct,  so  persuasive,  that  they  were  perfectly  adapted 
to  the  end  he  sought — the  conversion  of  human 
beings. 


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SUMMARY 

GIRARD,  STEPHEN.  Born  near  Bordeaux,  France, 
May  24,  1750;  sailed  as  cabin-boy  to  West  Indies,  and 
then  to  America;  established  in  Philadelphia,  1769; 
financial  mainstay  of  government  in  war  of  1812;  died 
at  Philadelphia,  December  26>  1831. 

SMITHSON,  JAMES  LEWIS  MACIE.  Born  in  France 
in  1765;  matriculated  from  Pembroke  College,  Oxford, 
England,  1782;  Fellow  Eoyal  Society,  1786;  distin 
guished  as  student  of  mineralogy  and  chemistry;  died 
at  Genoa,  Italy,  June  27,  1829. 

COOPER,  PETER.  Born  at  New  York  City,  February 
12,  1791;  apprenticed  to  carriage-maker,  1808;  engaged 
in  various  enterprises  and  established  Canton  Iron 
Works,  Canton,  Maryland,  1830;  Greenback  candidate 
for  President,  1876;  died  at  New  York,  April  4,  1883. 

PEABODY,  GEORGE.  Born  at  Danvers,  Massachusetts, 
February  18,  1795 ;  settled  in  London  as  a  banker,  1837; 
died  there,  November  4,  1869. 

HOPKINS,  JOHNS.  Born  at  Waterbury,  Connecticut, 
May  19,  1795;  founded  house  of  Hopkins  &  Brothers, 
1822 ;  chairman  of  finance  committee  Baltimore  &  Ohio 
railroad,  1855;  died  at  Baltimore,  December  24,  1873. 

CORNELL,  EZRA.  Born  at  Westchester  Landing,  New- 
York,  January  11,  1807;  mechanic  and  miller  at  Ithaca, 
New  York,  1828-41 ;  member  of  State  Assembly,  1862- 
63;  State  Senator,  1864-67;  died  at  Ithaca,  New  York, 
December  9,  1874. 

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SLATER,  JOHN  Fox.  Born  at  Slatersville,  Ehode 
Island,  March  4,  1815;  established  Slater  Fund,  1882; 
died  at  Norwich,  Connecticut,  May  7,  1884. 

STANFORD,  LELAND.  Born  at  Watervliet,  New  York, 
March  9,  1824;  Eepublican  governor  of  California, 
1861-63;  United  States  Senator,  1885-93;  died  at  Palo 
Alto,  California,  June  20,  1893. 

EOCKEFELLER,  JOHN  DAVisoN.  Born  at  Eichford, 
New  York,  July  8,  1839;  partner  of  Clark  &  Bocke- 
feller,  1858;  built  Standard  Oil  Works,  Cleveland, 
Ohio,  1865;  organized  Standard  Oil  Company,  1870; 
Standard  Oil  Trust,  1882. 

CARNEGIE,  ANDREW.  Born  at  Dunfermline,  Fife- 
shire,  Scotland,  November  25,  1837;  came  to  United 
States,  1848;  telegraph  messenger  boy,  1851;  intro 
duced  Bessemer  steel  process  to  America,  1868 ;  formed 
Carnegie  Steel  Company,  1899;  merged  into  United 
States  Steel  Corporation,  1901,  when  he  retired  from 
business. 

BEECHER,  LYMAN.  Born  at  New  Haven,  Connecti 
cut,  October  12,  1775;  pastor  of  various  Congregational 
churches,  1799-1832;  president  Lane  Theological  Sem 
inary,  1832-51;  died  at  Brooklyn,  New  York,  January 
10,  1863. 

BEECHER,  HENRY  WARD.  Born  at  Litchfield,  Con 
necticut,  June  24,  1813;  graduated  at  Amherst,  1834; 
pastor  of  Plymouth  Congregational  Church,  Brooklyn, 
1847-87 ;  founder  of  the  Independent  and  the  Christian 
Union ;  died  at  Brooklyn,  March  8,  1887. 

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CHANGING,  WILLIAM  ELLERY.  Born  at  Newport, 
Ehode  Island,  April  7,  1780;  graduated  at  Harvard, 
1798;  pastor  of  Federal  Street  Church,  Boston,  1803- 
42;  died  at  Bennington,  Vermont,  October  2,  1842. 

JUDSON,  ADONIRAM.  Born  at  Maiden,  Massachusetts, 
August  9,  1788;  graduated  at  Brown,  1807;  started  as 
missionary  to  Burmah,  1812,  and  remained  in  far  East 
until  his  death,  April  12,  1850. 

MOTT,  LUCRETIA.  Born  at  Nantucket,  Massachusetts, 
January  3,  1793;  entered  ministry  of  Friends,  1818; 
assisted  at  formation  of  American  anti-slavery  society, 
1833;  called  first  woman  suffrage  convention,  1848; 
died  near  Philadelphia,  November  11,  1880. 

Dix,  DOROTHEA  LYNDE.  Born  at  Worcester,  Massa 
chusetts,  1805 ;  devoted  her  whole  life  to  work  for  pau 
pers,  convicts,  and  insane  persons;  superintendent  of 
hospital  nurses  during  Civil  War ;  died  at  Trenton,  New 
Jersey,  July  19,  1887. 

CHILD,  LYDIA  MARIA.  Born  at  Medford,  Massachu 
setts,  February  11,  1802;  editor  National  Anti-Slavery 
Standard,  1840-43 ;  published  a  number  of  novels ;  died 
at  Wayland,  Massachusetts,  October  20,  1880. 

GARRISON,  WILLIAM  LLOYD.  Born  at  Newburyport, 
Massachusetts,  December  10,  1805;  began  publication 
of  the  Liberator,  1831 ;  president  American  Anti-Slav 
ery  Society,  1843-65 ;  died  at  New  York  City,  May  24, 
1879. 

PARKER,  THEODORE.  Born  at  Lexington,  Massachu 
setts,  August  24,  1810 ;  studied  at  Cambridge  Divinity 
School,  1834-36;  Unitarian  clergyman  at  Koxbury, 

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1837;  head  of  an  independent  society  at  Music  Hall,, 
Boston,  1846;  died  at  Florence,  Italy,  May  10,  1860. 

PHILLIPS,  WENDELL.  Born  at  Boston,  November  29, 
1811;  educated  at  Harvard;  admitted  to  the  bar,  1834; 
leading  orator  of  the  Abolitionists,  1837-61;  president 
of  the  Anti-Slavery  Society,  1865-70;  Prohibitionist 
candidate  for  governor  of  Massachusetts,  1870;  died  at 
Boston,  February  2,  1884. 

ANTHONY,  SUSAN  BROWNELL.  Born  at  South  Adams, 
Massachusetts,  February  15,  1820;  became  agitator  in 
cause  of  woman  suffrage,  organized  National  American 
Woman  Suffrage  Association  and  was  its  president  for 
many  years;  died  March  13,  1906. 

STANTON,  ELIZABETH  CADY.  Born  at  Johnstown,, 
New  York,  November  12,  1815 ;  graduated  at  Willard 
Seminary,  1832;  met  Lucretia  Mott,  1840;  held  first 
woman's  suffrage  convention,  1848;  associated  with 
Susan  B.  Anthony;  died  at  New  York  City,  October  26,. 
1902. 

BROWN,  JOHN.  Born  at  Torrington,  Connecticut, 
May  9,  1800 ;  removed  with  parents  to  Ohio,  1805 ;  emi 
grated  to  Kansas,  1855;  won  battle  of  Osawatomie, 
August,  1856;  seized  arsenal  at  Harper's  Ferry,  Vir 
ginia,  October  16,  1859 ;  captured,  October  18 ;  tried  by 
Commonwealth  of  Virginia,  October  27-31;  hanged  at 
Charlestown,  Virginia,  December  2,  1859. 

BARTON,  CLARA.  Born  at  Oxford,  Massachusetts, 
1821 ;  superintended  relief  work  on  battle-fields  during 
Civil  War;  laid  out  grounds  of  national  cemetery  at 
Andersonville,  1865 ;  worked  through  Franco-Prussian 
war,  1870;  distributed  relief  in  Strasburg,  Belfort, 

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Montpelier,  Paris,  1871;  secured  adoption  of  Treaty 
of  Geneva,  1882;  president  American  Eed  Cross  So 
ciety,  1881-1904. 

BERGH,  HENRY.  Born  at  New  York  City,  1823; 
secretary  of  legation  at  St.  Petersburg,  1862-64;  organ 
ized  American  Society  for  the  Prevention  of  Cruelty  to 
Animals,  1866;  founded  Society  for  the  Prevention  of 
€ruelty  to  Children,  1874;  died  at  New  York  City, 
March  12,  1888. 

BROOKS,  PHILLIPS.  Born  at  Boston,  December  13, 
1835;  graduated  at  Harvard,  1855;  graduated  from 
Episcopal  Seminary,  Alexandria,  Virginia,  1859 ;  rector 
of  Trinity  Church,  Boston,  1870-93 ;  elected  Bishop  of 
Episcopal  Diocese  of  Massachusetts,  1891;  died  at  Bos 
ton,  January  23,  1893. 

MOODY,  DWIGHT  LYMAN.  Born  at  Northfield,  Mas 
sachusetts,  February  5,  1837;  started  missionary  work 
at  Chicago,  1856 ;  conducted  revival  meetings  in  Great 
Britain,  1873-75 ;  and  devoted  the  remainder  of  his  life 
to  this  work;  died  at  Northfield,  December  22,  1899. 


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CHAPTER   IX 
MEN  OF  AFFAIRS 

LMOST  from  the  first  years  of  her  existence 
America  has  been  known  chiefly  as  a  commercial 
nation,  as  a  nation  noted  for  her  men  of  affairs,, 
rather  than  for  her  artists  and  men  of  letters.  Which 
is  to  say  that  the  life  of  the  Republic  has  been  prac 
tical  rather  than  artistic,  and  it  is  only  of  late  years, 
except  for  a  sporadic  instance  here  and  there,  that 
any  genuine  artistic  impulse  has  made  itself  felt. 

This  is  not  a  cause  of  reproach.     Given  the  cir 
cumstances,  it  was  inevitable  that  America  should 
develop  first  on  her  commercial  side.     Here  was  a 
great  continent,  stretching  thousands  of  miles  to  the 
westward,  waiting  for  man's  occupancy.    Millions  of 
acres  of  plain  and  woodland  awaited  development. 
There  were  cities  to  found  and  rivers  to  bridge  and 
roads  to  make  and  soil  to  till  and  gold  to  dig  before 
America  could  think  of  writing  poetry  or  painting 
pictures.     Think — it  is  only  three  centuries  since 
Jamestown  was  founded ;  only  a  century  and  a  quar 
ter  since  we  became  a  nation — a  mere  handbreadth 
of  time  when  compared  with  the  long  centuries  of 
English  or  French  or  Italian  history.     We  have  al 
ready  said  that  for  art  historic  background  is  neces- 

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sary;  a  background  of  achievement  and  tradition. 
Such  a  background  we  are  just  achieving.  Besides, 
during  our  first  century,  there  were  such  great  deeds 
of  conquest  and  development  to  be  done  that  they 
challenged  our  strongest  men.  Great  fortunes  were 
made,  as  a  matter  of  course,  and  Europe  witnessed 
the  unique  spectacle  of  men,  born  in  poverty  and  ob 
scurity,  rising  to  be  captains  of  the  world.  It  is  this 
which  has  never  ceased  to  shock  the  European  sense 
of  the  fitness  of  things — that  the  poor  boy  of  yester 
day  may  be  the  millionaire  of  to-morrow  and  take 
his  place  with  the  greatest  of  the  nation.  It  is  the 
story  of  a  few  such  boys  which  will  be  told  in  this 
chapter. 

First  is  the  man  who  financed  the  Revolution  and 
who  to  a  large  extent  made  possible  its  successful 
termination — Robert  Morris.  Born  in  Liverpool, 
England,  in  1734,  he  came  to  this  country  with  his 
father  at  the  age  of  thirteen,  and  a  place  was  soon 
found  for  him  in  the  counting-house  of  Charles  Wil 
ling,  a  wealthy  merchant  of  Philadelphia.  By  his 
diligence  and  activity,  as  well  as  unusual  intelli 
gence,  he  grew  in  favor  and  confidence,  until,  upon 
the  death  of  the  elder  Willing,  he  was  taken  into 
partnership  by  the  latter' s  son,  and  by  the  opening 
of  the  Revolution,  the  firm  of  Willing  &  Morris  was 
one  of  the  largest  and  most  prosperous  in  Philadel 
phia. 

Of  English  birth,  and  bound  to  England  by  the 
ties  of  business,  Morris  was  nevertheless  opposed  to 
the  stamp-act  and  was  one  of  those  who,  in  1765, 

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Men  of  Affairs 

signed  an  agreement  to  import  nothing  further  from 
England  until  the  act  was  repealed.  He  was,  how 
ever,  opposed  to  independence,  and,  as  a  member  of 
the  Continental  Congress,  voted  on  July  1,  1776, 
against  the  Declaration.  Three  days  later  he  de 
clined  to  vote,  but  when  the  Declaration  was  adopted,, 
he  signed  it,  and  threw  in  his  fortunes  unreservedly 
with  his  new  country.  His  services  were  more  than 
valuable — they  were  indispensable.  As  a  member  of 
the  Committee  of  Ways  and  Means,  he  backed  the 
government's  credit  with  his  own.  Without  his  aid, 
the  last  campaigns  of  the  war  would  have  been  im 
possible.  It  was  he  who  supplied  General  Green 
with  munitions  of  war  for  the  great  campaign 
of  the  south,  and  shortly  afterwards  raised  a 
million  and  a  half  on  his  own  notes  to  assist 
Washington  in  the  movement  which  resulted  in 
the  capture  of  Cornwallis  at  Yorktown.  A  year 
later,  when  the  financial  situation  of  the  government 
had  become  desperate,  he  organized  the  Bank  of 
!N"orth  America  to  assist  in  financing  it.  For  three 
years,  he  acted  as  superintendent  of  finance,  with 
complete  control  of  the  monetary  affairs  of  the  coun 
try.  He  was  a  member  of  the  Constitutional  Conven 
tion,  and  when  the  new  government  was  organized, 
Washington  asked  him  to  accept  the  treasury  port 
folio,  but  he  declined,  suggesting  instead  Alexander 
Hamilton.  That  was  not  the  least  of  his  services  to 
America,  for  Hamilton  was  preeminently  the  man 
for  the  place. 

It  was  the  striking  irony  of  fate  that  the  man 
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who  had  controlled  the  finances  of  a  nation  and  by 
his  personal  exertions  saved  it  from  bankruptcy 
should  himself  die  in  a  debtor's  prison;  yet  such 
was  the  case.  A  series  of  unfortunate  land  specula 
tions  swept  away  his  wealth  and  ruined  his  credit; 
he  found  himself  unable  to  meet  his  obligations  and 
was  seized  by  his  creditors  and  thrown  into  prison, 
where  he  remained  for  some  years,  and  where  death 
found  him  in  1806. 

So  Robert  Morris  was  not  one  of  the  founders  of 
great  fortunes.  Turn  we  to  the  earliest  and  perhaps 
most  successful  of  these,  John  Jacob  Astor,  the  very 
type  of  the  astute,  large-minded,  and  far-sighted 
financier.  Born  at  Waldorf,  Germany,  in  1763,  the 
son  of  a  poor  butcher  in  whose  shop  he  worked  until 
sixteen  years  of  age,  there  was  nothing  in  his  life 
or  circumstances  to  indicate  the  future  which  lay  be 
fore  him.  One  of  his  brothers,  however,  had  come 
to  America  and  settled  at  Xew  York,  and  young 
John  Astor  resolved  to  join  him  in  the  land  of  op 
portunity.  At  the  age  of  twenty,  he  was  able  to  do 
so,  bringing  with  him  some  musical  instruments  to 
sell  on  commission,  but  a  chance  acquaintance  which 
he  made  on  shipboard  changed  the  whole  course  of 
his  life. 

This  acquaintance  was  that  of  a  furrier,  who  told 
young  Astor  of  the  great  profits  to  be  made  by  buy 
ing  furs  from  the  Indians  and  selling  them  to  the 
large  dealers.  Perhaps  he  exaggerated  the  profits  of 
the  business ;  at  any  rate,  he  fired  the  ambition  of  his 
hearer,  and  the  latter  decided  to  enter  the  fur  busi- 

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Hen  of  Affairs 

ness  without  delay.  Upon  landing  in  New  York,, 
therefore,  he  at  once  secured  a  position  in  the  shop 
of  a  Quaker  furrier,  and  after  learning  all  the  de 
tails  of  the  business,  opened  a  shop  of  his  own. 

Perhaps  no  one  ever  worked  harder  in  establish 
ing  a  business  than  John  Jacob  Astor  did.  Early 
and  late  he  was  at  his  shop,  except  when  absent  on 
long  and  arduous  purchasing  expeditions  into  the 
wilderness.  More  than  that,  he  possessed  admirable 
business  judgment,  so  that,  after  fifteen  years  of 
work,  he  had  succeeded  in  accumulating  a  fortune  of 
a  quarter  of  a  million  dollars.  With  careful  and  sa 
gacious  management,  the  business  prospered  so  that 
Astor  was  soon  able  to  send  his  furs  to  Europe  in  his. 
own  vessels,  and  bring  back  European  goods.  And 
about  this  time,  he  began  working  on  a  grandiose  and 
picturesque  enterprise. 

The  English  Hudson  Bay  Company,  established 
many  years  before,  with  hundreds  of  trappers  and 
traders  and  scores  of  trading-posts,  controlled  the 
rich  fur  business  of  Canada  and  the  northwest.  We 
have  seen  how,  years  after  the  events  which  we  are 
now  narrating,  the  agents  of  the  company  tried  to 
save  Oregon  for  England  and  how  Marcus  Whitman 
foiled  them.  Astor's  plan,  in  outline,  was  to  render- 
American  trade  independent  of  the  Hudson  Bay 
Company  by  establishing  a  chain  of  trading-posts- 
from  the  great  lakes  to  the  Pacific,  to  plant  a  central 
depot  at  the  mouth  of  the  Columbia  river,  and  to 
acquire  one  of  the  Sandwich  Islands  and  establish  a 
line  of  vessels  between  the  western  coast  of  America 

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and  the  ports  of  Japan,  China  and  India.  Surely  a 
man  who  could  conceive  a  plan  like  that  was  some 
thing  more  than  a  mere  trader,  and  Astor  proceeded 
at  once  to  carry  it  into  effect. 

Two  expeditions  were  sent  out,  one  by  land  and 
one  by  sea,  to  open  up  intercourse  with  the  Indians 
of  the  Pacific  coast,  and  the  settlement  of  Astoria 
was  planted  at  the  mouth  of  the  Columbia  river. 
Whether  Astor  would  have  been  able  to  carry  out  the 
remainder  of  his  plan  is  purely  problematical,  for 
before  he  had  it  fairly  under  way,  the  war  of  1812 
began,  and  he  was  forced  to  abandon  the  enterprise. 
The  story  of  this  far-reaching  project  has  been  told 
by  Washington  Irving  in  his  "  Astoria."  Until  his 
death,  he  continued  to  enlarge  and  increase  his  busi 
ness,  and  left  a  fortune  estimated  at  twenty  millions 
of  dollars. 

The  Astor  plan  of  investment  is  one  of  the  safest, 
most  sagacious  in  the  world.  Practically  all  of  his 
profits  were  invested  by  John  Jacob  Astor  in  real 
estate  outside  the  compact  portion  of  the  city  of 
!N~ew  York.  As  the  city  grew  out  to  his  holdings, 
he  would  improve  them,  rent  or  sell  them,  and  re 
invest  further  out.  In  this  way  the  growth  of  the 
city  marked  also  the  growth  of  his  fortune,  and  this 
plan  of  investment  has  been  followed  by  his  descend 
ants  to  the  present  day,  until  they  have  become  by 
far  the  most  important  owners  of  real  estate  in  New 
York  City.  His  son,  William  B.  Astor,  gave  his  life 
to  the  preservation  and  growth  of  the  vast  property 
he  inherited,  and  at  his  death  had  more  than  doubled 

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Men  of  Affairs 

it,  dividing  an  estate  of  $45,000,000  between  his  two 
sons. 

Not  that  the  whole  thought  of  these  two  men  was 
money-getting,  for  their  public  gifts  were  numerous 
and  important.  The  most  noteworthy  was  the  Astor 
library,  founded  by  John  Jacob  Astor  at  the  sugges 
tion  of  Washington  Irving,  and  largely  added  to  by 
his  son,  the  total  amount  of  the  Astor  donations  to 
it  exceeding  a  million  dollars.  But  they  stand  as 
two  types  of  sagacious  and  hard-headed  business 
men,  to  whom  money-making  and  the  still  more  diffi 
cult  art  of  money-keeping  was  an  instinctive  accom 
plishment. 

The  second  great  American  fortune  was  that 
founded  by  Cornelius  Yanderbilt,  as  remarkable 
and  picturesque  a  character  as  this  country  ever  pro 
duced.  Born  on  Staten  Island  in  1794,  the  son  of  a 
farmer  in  moderate  circumstances,  the  boy  soon  de 
veloped  a  remarkable  talent  for  trade.  His  father 
owned  a  sail-boat,  in  which  he  conveyed  his  produce 
across  the  bay  to  the  New  York  markets,  and  the 
boy  soon  learned  to  manage  this  and  was  intrusted 
with  these  daily  trips.  "When  he  was  sixteen  years 
old,  he  bought  a  boat  of  his  own,  in  which  he  ferried 
passengers  across  the  bay,  and  two  years  later  he  was 
owner  of  two  boats  and  captain  of  a  third.  This  was 
the  beginning  of  the  great  fleet  of  steamers,  sloops 
and  schooners  which  he  built  up  for  the  navigation 
of  the  shores  of  New- York  bay  and  the  Hudson  river, 
which  won  him  the  title  of  "  Commodore,"  which 
clung  to  him  all  his  life.  Before  he  was  forty  years 

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old,  he  had  accumulated  a  fortune  of  half  a  million 
dollars,  and  was  ready  for  those  great  financial 
operations  which  marked  his  later  life. 

The  discovery  of  gold  in  California  led  him  to 
establish  a  passenger  line  by  way  of  Lake  Nicaragua 
which  netted  him  ten  millions  in  ten  years ;  he  estab 
lished  a  fast  line  of  passenger  steamships  between 
New  York  and  Havre;  and  finally  was  attracted  to 
railway  development  as  a  field  of  enterprise  destined 
to  win  large  returns.  In  the  course  of  a  few  years 
he  had  secured  control  of  both  the  Hudson  River  and 
New  York  Central  roads,  and  brought  both  of  them 
to  the  highest  state  of  efficiency,  and  after  consolidat 
ing  them,  extended  the  system  to  Chicago  by  the  pur 
chase  of  the  Lake  Shore,  the  Canada  Southern  and 
Michigan  Central.  He  built  a  great  terminal  in  New 
York  City,  and  made  the  system  so  profitable  that, 
from  it,  and  a  series  of  fortunate  speculations,  he 
accumulated  a  fortune  of  $100,000,000,  practically 
all  of  which  he  bequeathed  to  his  eldest  son,  William 
Henry.  One  million  was  also  given  for  the  estab 
lishment  of  Yanderbilt  University  at  Nashville, 
Tennessee. 

Cornelius  Yanderbilt,  for  many  years,  had  a  very 
poor  opinion  of  his  son's  financial  ability,  and  giving 
him  a  small  farm  on  Staten  Island,  left  him  to  shift 
for  himself.  Everyone  has  read  of  the  incident 
which  changed  this  opinion.  William  needed  some 
fertilizer  for  his  farm,  and  asked  his  father  to  give 
him  a  load  of  manure  from  his  stables.  His  father 
told  him  to  go  ahead  and  take  a  load,  and  William 

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Men  of  Affairs 

thereupon  brought  a  great  scow  up  to  the  pier  near 
the  stables,  proceeded  to  load  it,  and  when  his  father 
protested,  pointed  out  that  he  had  not  specified  the 
kind  of  load,  but  that  he  had  meant  a  scow-load. 
This  bit  of  sharp  practice  pleased  his  father,  and, 
shortly  afterwards,  the  great  success  with  which  he 
managed  the  Staten  Island  Railroad,  as  receiver, 
established  him  in  his  father's  confidence.  He  con 
tinued  and  extended  his  father's  policy  of  railway  in 
vestment,  and  added  to  the  great  fortune  which  had 
been  left  him,  and  which  still  remains  one  of  the 
greatest  in  America,  though  it  has  been  split  up 
among  the  different  branches  of  the  Vanderbilt  fam 
ily.  William  himself  distributed  about  two  millions 
in  various  benevolent  and  public  enterprises,  one  of 
the  queerest  of  which  was  the  removal  of  one  of 
"  Cleopatra's  Needles  "  from  Egypt  to  Central  Park, 
New  York  City,  at  a  cost  of  over  a  hundred  thousand 
dollars. 

In  the  business  world  of  ]STew  York  City,  half  a 
century  ago,  no  name  was  more  prominent  than  that 
of  A.  T.  Stewart,  whose  success  as  a  merchant  was 
one  of  the  most  astonishing  features  of  the  time. 
Born  near  Belfast,  Ireland,  in  1803,  Stewart  was  a 
descendant  from  one  of  those  hardy  and  thrifty 
Scotch-Irish,  whom  we  have  had  occasion  to  mention 
before.  His  father  was  a  farmer,  but  died  while 
the  son  was  still  at  school,  and  at  the  age  of  twenty 
the  latter  came  to  New  York,  and  after  looking  over 
the  field,  opened  a  small  store  on  lower  Broadway, 
with  a  sleeping  apartment  for  himself  in  the  rear. 

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Such  was  the  beginning  of  the  greatest  dry-goods 
business  this  country  ever  saw.  It  increased  by 
leaps  and  bounds,  for  Stewart  seems  to  have  had  a 
sort  of  instinctive  genius  for  the  business.  He  was 
continually  moving  to  larger  and  larger  quarters, 
and  in  1862,  built  on  Broadway  a  store  which  was 
at  that  time  the  largest  in  the  world,  and  which,  even 
in  this  day  of  mammoth  structures,  commands  atten 
tion.  Its  cost  was  nearly  three  millions,  a  colossal 
sum  for  those  days;  two  thousand  people  were  em 
ployed  in  it  and  it  cost  a  million  a  year  to  run. 
But  it  brought  a  tremendous  return,  and  its  owner 
soon  became  one  of  the  wealthiest  men  in  New 
York. 

He  wanted  more  than  wealth — he  hungered  for 
political  and  social  honors  which  were  never  fully 
his.  He  had  made  a  large  contribution  to  the  fund 
of  $100,000  presented  by  the  merchants  of  "New 
York  to  General  Grant,  and  in  1869,  Grant  ap 
pointed  him  secretary  of  the  treasury.  The  senate 
refused  to  confirm  the  appointment,  on  the  ground 
that  the  law  excluded  from  that  office  anyone  inter 
ested  in  the  importation  of  merchandise.  Grant  sent 
to  the  senate  a  message  recommending  that  this  law 
be  repealed,  but  the  senate  refused;  and  Stewart 
thereupon  offered  to  place  his  business  in  the  hands 
of  trustees  and  devote  its  entire  profits  to  charity 
during  his  term  of  office;  but  still  the  senate  refused, 
and  the  nomination  was  withdrawn.  It  was  a  bitter 
blow  to  Stewart,  nor  was  his  fight  for  social  promi 
nence  much  more  fortunate.  As  his  last  stake,  as  it 

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Men  of  Affairs 

were,  he  began  the  erection  of  a  great  marble  palace 
on  Fifth  Avenue,  designed  to  cost  a  million  and  to 
be  the  finest  private  residence  in  the  world,  but  he 
died  before  it  was  completed. 

One  of  the  great  industries  of  the  country  is  that 
of  sugar  refining,  and  it  is  inseparably  connected  with 
the  name  of  Havemeyer,  for  to  the  Havemeyers  is 
due  its  development  and  its  formation  into  a  so- 
called  trust,  which  practically  controls  the  market, 
and  which  has  won  great  wealth  for  its  organizers. 
The  ancestor  of  the  Havemeyers  was  a  thrifty  Ger 
man  who  came  to  this  country  in  the  latter  part  of 
the  eighteenth  century,  and,  after  engaging  in  vari 
ous  pursuits,  opened  a  little  sugar  refinery  in  !N"ew 
York  City,  which  soon  brought  him  a  comfortable 
income.  There,  in  1804,  William  Frederick  Have- 
meyer  was  born,  and  after  a  careful  education,  en 
tered  the  refinery,  gained  a  thorough  knowledge  of 
the  business  and,  in  1828  succeeded  to  it,  having  as 
a  partner  his  cousin,  Frederick  Christian  Have- 
meyer.  These  two  men  developed  the  business  in  a 
wonderful  manner,  installing  new  machinery,  in 
venting  new  processes,  which  reduced  the  manufac 
turing  cost,  acquiring  possession  of  other  plants  and 
securing  government  support  in  the  shape  of  a  pro 
tective  tariff,  which  made  a  naturally  profitable 
business  doubly  so,  and  netted  its  owners  many  mil 
lions. 

William  Frederick  llavemeyer  found  time,  in  the 
intervals  of  running  his  business,  to  take  a  promi- 

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nent  part  in  Xew  York  politics.  He  was  mayor  of  the 
city  from  1845  to  1851,  and  again  in  1873,  dying 
before  the  last  term  was  finished. 

As  far  as  possible  removed  from  Havemeyer's 
humdrum  existence  was  that  of  Phineas  Taylor  Bar 
num,  the  greatest  showman  the  world  has  ever  seen, 
the  originator  of  the  great  travelling  circus,  the  ex 
ploiter  of  Tom  Thumb  and  Jenny  Lind,  the  owner 
of  Jumbo,  the  most  famous  elephant  that  ever  lived,, 
whose  name  has  passed  into  the  English  language  as 
a  synonym  for  bigness. 

Barnum  was  born  at  Bethel,  Connecticut,  in  1810. 
His  father  was  an  inn-keeper  and  died  when  the  boy 
was  fifteen  years  old,  leaving  no  property.  He  tried 
his  hand  at  store-keeping,  and  failed;  ran  a  news 
paper,  and  was  imprisoned  for  libel,  and  finally 
reached  Kew  York  at  about  the  end  of  his  resources 
and  looking  around  for  something  to  do.  That  was 
in.  1834,  and  by  accident  he  hit  upon  his  real  voca 
tion. 

A  man  by  the  name  of  E.  W.  Lindsay  was  exhibit 
ing  through  the  country  an  old  negro  woman  named 
Joice  Heth,  advertising  her  as  being  16.1  years  old,, 
and  as  having  been  the  nurse  of  George  Washington. 
Barnum  went  to  see  her  and  found  her  an  extraordi 
nary-looking  object.  He  has  himself  told  how  he  was 
impressed  by  her. 

"  Joice  Heth/'  he  says,  "  was  certainly  a  remark 
able  curiosity,  and  she  looked  as  though  she  might 
have  been  far  older  than  her  age  as  advertised.  She 
was  apparently  in  good  health  and  spirits,  but  front 

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Men  of  Affairs 

age  or  disease,  or  both,  was  unable  to  change  her 
position;  she  could  move  one  arm  at  will,  but  her 
lower  limbs  could  not  be  straightened;  her  left  arm 
lay  across  her  breast  and  she  could  not  remove  it; 
the  fingers  of  her  left  hand  were  drawn  down  so  as 
nearly  to  close  it,  and  were  fixed;  the  nails  on  that 
hand  were  almost  four  inches  long  and  extended 
above  her  wrist;  her  head  was  covered  with  a  thick 
bush  of  gray  hair ;  but  she  was  toothless  and  totally 
blind,  and  her  eyes  had  sunk  so  deeply  in  the  sockets 
as  to  have  disappeared  altogether.  Nevertheless  she 
was  pert  and  sociable  and  would  talk  as  long  as  peo 
ple  would  converse  with  her.  She  was  quite  garrulous 
about  '  dear  little  George/  at  whose  birth  she  de 
clared  she  was  present,  having  been  at  the  time  a 
slave  of  Elizabeth  Atwood,  a  half-sister  of  Augustine 
Washington,  the  father  of  George  "Washington.  As 
nurse,  she  put  the  first  clothes  on  the  infant,  and  she 
claimed  to  have  raised  him." 

Barnum  was  so  impressed  by  this  extraordinary 
object,  that  he  bought  her  for  a  thousand  dollars, 
putting  his  last  cent  into  the  venture  and  borrowing 
what  he  lacked.  He  proceeded  to  advertise  her  with 
characteristic  energy,  and  great  crowds  thronged  to 
see  her,  so  that  his  receipts  sometimes  ran  as  high  as 
$1,500  a  week.  However,  the  old  woman  died  within 
a  year,  and  a  post-mortem  examination  showed  that 
she  was  really  only  about  eighty  years  old. 

But  Barnum  had  found  his  vocation,  that  of  show 
man,  and  after  a  few  unsuccessful  ventures,  bought 
Scudder's  American  Museum,  in  New  York  City, 

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and  started  out  on  a  brilliant  career.  It  is  interest 
ing  to  note  that  the  museum  which  Barnum  pur 
chased  consisted  in  part  of  the  curios  collected  years 
before  by  Charles  and  Rembrandt  Peale.  Barnum 
added  to  it,  was  indefatigable  in  securing  curiosities, 
really  created  the  art  of  modern  advertising,  and  it 
was  his  proudest  boast  that  no  one  ever  left  the  mu 
seum  without  having  got  his  money's  worth.  He  was 
one  of  the  first  to  realize  that  the  best  possible 
advertisement  is  a  pleased  customer,  and  he  tried 
honestly  to  keep  his  museum  supplied  with  every 
novelty.  The  public  soon  came  to  appreciate  this, 
and  perhaps  his  greatest  asset  was  public  confi 
dence  in  his  promises.  People  came  to  believe  that 
when  Barnum  advertised  a  thing,  he  really  had  it. 
But  the  most  fortunate  day  in  all  his  life  was  that 
November  day  of  1842,  when  he  discovered  at 
Bridgeport,  Connecticut,  the  midget  whose  real  name 
wras  Charles  S.  Stratton,  but  who  was  to  become 
world-famous  as  General  Tom  Thumb. 

The  story  of  Tom  Thumb's  success  reads  like  a 
romance.  He  was  quite  young  when  Barnum  got 
him,  and  the  showman  took  great  pains  with  his  edu 
cation  and  training,  for  he  wanted  the  midget  to  ap 
pear  a  finished  man  of  the  world.  He  became  a  great 
public  favorite,  toured  America  and  Europe,  was  in 
troduced  to  kings  and  princes  and  made  a  great  for 
tune  for  himself  and  his  exhibitor.  Barnum  struck 
the  apogee  of  his  fortunes  when  he  discovered  an 
other  midget,  Lavinia  Warren,  who  achieved  a  suc 
cess  scarcely  less  than  Tom  Thumb's.  Indeed,  she 

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Men  of  Affairs 

and  the  General  fell  in  love  with  each  other  and  were 
married  at  Grace  Church,  and  as  General  and  Mrs. 
Tom  Thumb  were  perhaps  the  greatest  drawing  cards 
in  the  world.  Another  triumph  of  his  career  was  his 
engagement  of  Jenny  Lind  for  a  series  of  one  hun 
dred  concerts,  at  a  salary  of  a  thousand  dollars  a 
night,  the  receipts  of  the  tour  being  over  seven  hun 
dred  thousand  dollars. 

Barnum  had  many  ups  and  downs,  which  he  met 
with  an  invincible  optimism.  His  museum  burned 
down  and  he  rebuilt  it,  but  it  soon  burned  down 
again.  It  was  then  that  the  idea  occurred  to  him  to 
establish  a  travelling  museum,  exhibiting  under  a 
tent,  and  it  was  this  idea  which  developed  into  "  The 
Greatest  Show  on  Earth."  It  really  was  the  greatest 
and  its  owner  never  spared  money  in  his  endeavor  to 
keep  it  so.  Large-hearted,  benevolent,  a  true  enter 
tainer,  he  will  always  occupy  a  bright  place  in  the 
memory  of  the  American  public. 

Perhaps  no  name  in  the  history  of  America  was 
ever  more  closely  connected  in  the  public  mind  with 
money-making  for  its  own  sake  than  that  of  Russell 
Sage.  It  will  be  surprising  news  to  many,  who  knew 
him  only  as  a  money-lender  on  a  large  scale,  that  he 
started  out  on  a  public  career,  as  alderman,  county 
treasurer,  and  finally  as  member  of  congress  for  two 
terms,  from  1853  to  1857.  He  was  the  first  person 
to  advocate,  on  the  floor  of  congress,  the  purchase  of 
Mount  Vernon  by  the  government.  His  career  on 
Wall  street  began  shortly  after  that,  at  first  in  a 

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small  way;  but  before  his  death,  he  had  developed 
into  the  greatest  individual  money-lender  in  the 
world. 

That  was  his  whole  life.  He  took  no  part  in 
any  political  or  charitable  movement;  he  had  no  in 
terest  in  art,  and  he  lived  in  the  simplest  manner. 
He  used  his  wealth,  not  to  procure  enjoyment  for 
himself  or  other  people,  but  to  procure  more  wealth. 
He  was  saving  to  the  point  of  miserliness ;  he  got  the 
utmost  he  could  out  of  his  money;  he  never  took  a 
vacation — and  dying,  at  the  age  of  ninety,  left  a  for 
tune  of  many  millions.  He  had  no  children  and  the 
whole  fortune  went  to  his  wife.  She  at  once  pro 
ceeded  to  bestow  it  in  carefully-considered  benevol 
ences,  so  that  the  Sage  millions  are  to  benefit  human 
ity,  after  all.  In  fact,  it  is  doubtful  if  any  other  for 
tune,  amassed  by  a  single  man,  will,  in  the  end,  do 
so  much  good  in  the  world  as  will  this  of  Russell 
Sage,  for  Mrs.  Sage  is  devoting  it  to  what  may  be 
called  scientific  charity,  which  has  for  its  object  the 
universal  betterment  of  mankind. 

Mrs.  Sage,  who  thus  becomes  one  of  the  world's 
great  philanthropists,  was  Margaret  Olivia  Slocum, 
of  Syracuse,  New  York,  and  was  married  to  Mr. 
Sage  in  1869.  She  was  of  a  family  in  only  moderate 
•circumstances,  and  was  a  school  teacher  previous  to 
her  marriage.  The  turn  of  the  wheel  made  her  the 
wealthiest  woman  in  the  world,  and  she  proceeded 
without  delay  to  the  carrying  out  of  the  immense 
benevolent  enterprises  which  she  had  doubtless  long 
meditated. 

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Men  of  Affairs 

The  name  of  Cyrus  West  Field  is  so  closely  asso 
ciated  with  his  supreme  achievement,  the  laying  of 
the  first  Atlantic  cable,  that  we  are  apt  to  forget  that 
he  was  in  the  beginning  a  manufacturer  and  had 
amassed  a  considerable  fortune  before  his  attention, 
was  called  to  the  possibility  of  linking  Europe  to 
America  by  a  telegraph  line  laid  on  the  bottom  of 
the  Atlantic.  It  was  under  A.  T.  Stewart  that  Field 
received  his  mercantile  training,  having  gone  to  New- 
York  in  1834,  at  the  age  of  fifteen,  from  his  home 
in  Stockbridge,  Massachusetts,  and  entering  Stew 
art's  employ  as  a  clerk. 

He  was  an  apt  pupil,  and  before  he  was  of  age, 
owned  an  establishment  of  his  own  for  the  manufac 
ture  and  sale  of  paper.  In  this  business,  in  the 
course  of  a  dozen  years,  he  had  amassed  a  fortune  so 
considerable  that  he  was  able  to  retire  from  active 
charge  of  it,  and  to  spend  his  time  in  travel.  It  was 
in  1853  that  the  project  of  carrying  a  telegraph  line 
across  the  Atlantic  ocean  suggested  itself  to  him  dur^ 
ing  a  conversation  with  his  brother,  who  was  inter 
ested  in  building  a  line  across  Newfoundland.  The 
more  he  considered  and  investigated  the  project,  the 
more  feasible  it  seemed,  and  he  proceeded  to  organ 
ize  the  New  York,  Newfoundland  and  London  Tele 
graph  Company,  himself  taking  one  fourth  of  the 
capital  stock,  and  interesting  such  other  capitalists  as 
Peter  Cooper,  Moses  Taylor,  Chandler  White  and. 
Marshall  Roberts. 

But  the  project  which  had  appeared  simple  enougK 
in  theory  and  on  paper,  proved  extremely  difficult  of 

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execution.  If  Field  <x>uld  have  foreseen  the  thirteen 
years  of  constant  anxiety  which  awaited  him,  he 
would  no  doubt  have  hesitated  to  undertake  it.  It 
looked,  at  first,  as  though  success  would  crown  his 
efforts  almost  at  the  outset,  for  in  1858,  the  laying 
of  a  cahle  was  completed,  and  for  some  days,  mes 
sages  were  sent  from  one  continent  to  the  other.  Then 
the  signals  began  to  grow  fainter  and  fainter,  until 
they  became  imperceptible,  supposedly  from  the 
water  of  the  ocean  penetrating  the  cable  covering. 

At  any  rate,  the  work  had  to  be  done  all  over 
again,  with  little  money  on  hand,  and  the  coming  of 
the  Civil  War  helped  to  make  further  progress  im 
possible.  Field  visited  Europe  more  than  twenty 
times  in  the  effort  to  raise  money  for  the  enterprise 
and  to  keep  it  before  the  public,  but  it  was  not  until 
1865  that  another  effort  to  lay  the  cable  could  be 
made.  The  "  Great  Eastern,"  the  largest  ship  in  the 
world,  was  secured,  and  began  paying  out  the  cable ; 
but  twelve  hundred  miles  from  shore  the  cable 
parted  and  could  not  be  regained,  although  every 
effort  was  made  to  grapple  it.  So  the  vessel  had  to 
put  back  to  England,  and  Field  was  confronted  with 
the  heart-breaking  task  of  raising  even  more  money. 
He  succeeded  in  doing  so,  and  in  1866,  another  expe 
dition  started  out  with  a  new  cable.  This  time,  it 
met  with  no  serious  misadventure,  and  on  July  27, 
telegraphic  communication  was  re-established  be 
tween  England  and  America,  and  has  never  since 
been  interrupted. 

That  cable  was  the  first  of  the  hundreds  which 
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Men  of  Affairs 

now  encircle  the  globe.  Congress  presented  the  bold 
adventurer  with  a  gold  medal  and  the  thanks  of  the 
nation ;  John  Bright  pronounced  him  "  the  Colum 
bus  of  modern  times,  who,  by  his  cable,  has  moored 
the  New  World  alongside  of  the  Old  " ;  the  Paris  ex 
position  of  1867  gave  him  the  grand  medal,  the 
highest  prize  it  had  to  bestow ;  and  he  received  votes 
of  thanks  and  medals  and  presents  from  all  parts  of 
the  world. 

In  1884,  two  other  cables  were  laid  across  the  At 
lantic  by  John  W.  Mackay  and  James  Gordon  Ben 
nett,  whose  private  property  they  remained.  Mackay 
had  had  an  adventurous  career,  and  was  destined  to 
be  the  founder  of  another  of  those  great  American 
fortunes  which  are  the  wonder  and  admiration  of 
Europe.  He  was  born  in  Dublin,  Ireland,  in  1831, 
his  father  being  another  of  those  sturdy  Scotch-Irish 
of  whom  we  have  already  had  occasion  to  speak.  He 
was  brought  to  New  York  at  the  age  of  nine;  but 
his  father  died  a  short  time  thereafter  and  the  boy 
was  thrown  practically  upon  his  own  resources. 

When  gold  was  discovered  in  California  in  1849, 
Mackay  joined  the  crowd  that  rushed  to  the  new  El 
Dorado,  and  for  several  years,  he  lived  a  typical 
miner's  life,  roughing  it  in  the  camps,  but  gaining 
little  except  a  thorough  knowledge  of  mining.  In 
1860,  some  guiding  spirit  led  him  eastward  to 
Nevada;  his  fortunes  there,  steadily  improved,  until 
he  became  one  of  the  leading  men  in  the  settlement, 
and  in  1872,  he  made  one  of  the  most  famous  and 
romantic  discoveries  in  mining  history,  that  of  the 

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famous  Comstock  lode,  on  a  ledge  of  rock  high  in  the 
Sierras,  under  which  Virginia  City  now  nestles.  So 
rich  in  silver  was  this  great  ledge  of  rock  and  its 
enormous  production  added  so  greatly  to  the  world's 
supply  of  silver  that  the  market  price  fell  to  a  point 
where  such  countries  as  India  and  China,  whose  cur 
rency  was  on  a  silver  hasis,  were  seriously  embar 
rassed  to  maintain  values.  From  one  mine  alone  over 
$150,000,000  was  taken  out.  Mackay  devoted  him 
self  personally  to  the  superintendence  of  the  mines, 
'working  in  the  lower  levels  with  his  men,  who  idolized 
Mm. 

Let  us  turn  for  a  moment  to  the  career  of  another 
great  fortune-builder,  the  man  who  was,  perhaps,  the 
greatest  freebooter  the  American  financial  world  ever 
saw,  who  made  his  money  by  destroying  rather  than 
building  up,  and  whose  wealth  finally  killed  him — 
Jay  Gould.  Let  us  see  if  we  can  get  some  sort  of 
idea  of  the  personality  of  this  extraordinary  man. 

Born  in  1836,  a  farmer's  boy,  with  only  such  edu 
cation  as  he  could  pick  up,  he  managed  to  find  time 
to  study  surveying,  and  for  two  or  three  years  was 
engaged  in  making  surveys  of  various  ISTew  York 
counties.  While  thus  engaged,  he  fell  in  with  a 
wealthy  and  eccentric  individual  named  Zadock 
Pratt,  who  sent  him  to  the  western  part  of  the  state 
to  select  a  site  for  a  tannery.  He  was  soon  doing  a 
large  lumbering  business,  first  with  Pratt  and  then 
in  his  own  name;  but  he  sold  out  just  before  the 
panic  of  1857,  and  soon  after  entered  upon  that  ca- 

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Men  of  Affairs 

reer  of  speculation  in  New  York  City  which,  in  the 
end,  made  him  the  best-hated  man  in  America. 

Picture  the  man,  small,  only  five  feet  six  inches 
in  height,  with  sallow  skin  and  jet  black  whiskers, 
his  eyes  dark  and  piercing,  his  whole  personality,  as 
one  observer  put  it,  "  reminiscent  of  the  spider." 
His  reputation  was  that  of  an  unscrupulous  and  im 
moral  rascal,  who  would  not  hesitate  to  sacrifice  his 
best  friends,  if  need  be.  His  war  against  Cornelius 
Vanderbilt  for  control  of  the  Erie  was  one  of  his 
typical  operations — a  war  which,  when  he  saw  he 
was  losing,  he  won  by  issuing  $5,000,000  worth  of 
fraudulent  stock.  There  was  never  any  question 
about  the  criminality  of  this  proceeding,  and  Gould 
was  forced  to  fiee  to  New  Jersey,  where  he  spent 
millions  in  corrupting  courts  and  legislatures — mil 
lions,  not  taken  from  his  own  pocket,  but  from  the 
treasury  of  the  Erie,  of  which  he  had  control.  He 
was  ousted,  at  last,  but  not  until  he  had  added  $62,- 
000,000  to  the  indebtedness  of  the  road,  of  which, 
amount  it  was  asserted  Gould  had  pocketed  $12,- 
000,000. 

The  culminating  feature  of  his  career  was  his 
attempt  to  corner  gold,  which  brought  about  the  fa 
mous  Black  Friday  panic  of  1869.  The  scheme,  one 
of  the  most  daring  ever  attempted  by  any  operator, 
came  near  success.  Gould  is  said  to  have  bribed  the 
brother-in-law  of  President  Grant  and  to  have  per 
suaded  the  President  himself  not  to  release  any  of 
the  government  supply  of  gold.  He  then  succeeded 
in  driving  the  price  up  to  162J,  when  suddenly  the 

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bubble  burst.  Gould,  himself,  had  been  warned  and 
succeeded  in  getting  away  with  his  immense  profits, 
covering  himself  at  the  expense  of  his  associates,  an 
act  of  treachery  unprecedented  even  in  the  stock 
market. 

These  were  only  two  of  the  remarkable  operations 
which  he  engineered,  and  which  need  not  be  given  in 
detail  here.  The  net  result  was  a  fortune  of  some 
seventy  million  dollars,  and  a  reputation  for  duplic 
ity  such  as  perhaps  no  man  in  America  ever  had  be 
fore.  It  is  only  fair  to  Gould  to  say,  however,  that 
he  accomplished  merely  what  most  stock  gamblers 
would  like  to  accomplish,  if  they  could,  and  that  out 
side  of  finance,  he  seems  to  have  been  an  estimable 
man,  faithful  to  his  wife,  devoted  to  his  children, 
and  passionately  fond  of  flowers.  He  made  no  gifts 
of  any  consequence  to  charity  during  his  life,  nor 
did  he  make  a  single  benevolent  bequest  in  his  will ; 
but  one  of  his  children,  Helen  Miller  Gould,  has 
more  than  atoned  for  this  by  practically  devoting  her 
life  and  her  fortune  to  charitable  work.  It  is  doubt 
ful  if  there  is  a  better-loved  woman  in  America  to 
day  than  Helen  Gould,  who  has  shown  so  notably 
how  a  life  may  be  consecrated  to  good  works. 

The  great  marble  palace  which  A.  T.  Stewart 
built  on  Broadway,  in  New  York  City,  to  house  his 
business,  and  which  was,  at  the  time,  the  largest 
building  in  the  world  devoted  to  a  retail  business, 
is  now  occupied  by  another  great  merchant,  who, 
starting  from  a  beginning  even  smaller  than  Stew- 

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Men  of  Affairs 

art's,  has  built  up  a  business  many  times  as  great. 
John  Wanamaker,  whatever  the  growth  of  the  coun 
try  may  be  hereafter,  will  always  remain  one  of 
America's  most  representative  and  most  successful 
men  of  affairs — both  representative  and  successful 
because  his  business  has  rested  from  the  first  on  the 
principle  of  honest  dealing,  of  making  satisfied  cus 
tomers — in  a  word,  upon  the  altogether  modern 
principle  of  "  your  money  back,  if  you  want  it." 

John  Wanamaker  was  born  in  Philadelphia  in 
1838,  a  poor  boy  with  his  way  to  make  in  the  world. 
He  received  his  education  in  the  common  schools, 
and  at  the  age  of  fourteen,  entered  upon  his  business 
career  as  an  errand  boy  in  a  book  store.  From  that, 
he  got  a  clerkship  in  a  clothing  store,  and  for  some 
years  acted  as  salesman,  until  he  could  save  enough 
money  to  start  a  little  store  of  his  own.  This  he  was 
able  to  do  in  1861,  in  partnership  with  a  man  named 
Nathan  Brown,  and  ten  years  later,  he  was  sole 
owner  of  a  prosperous  and  growing  business.  It  was 
at  about  this  time  that  an  idea  occurred  to  him  which 
was  destined  to  revolutionize  the  retail  business  of 
the  larger  cities  of  the  country. 

The  idea  was  simply  this:  In  the  great  cities, 
most  shoppers  have  to  travel  a  considerable  distance 
to  get  to  the  business  centre,  and  must  there  waste 
time  and  energy  going  from  one  store  to  another  to 
make  their  purchases.  Why  not,  then,  combine  all 
the  representative  retail  businesses  into  one  store,  so 
that  the  shopper  could  make  all  purchases  under  a 
single  roof,  pay  for  them  all  at  once,  and  have  them 

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all  delivered  at  the  same  time?  Moreover,  why 
could  not  one  great  business  be  conducted  more 
cheaply,  and  so  undersell,  the  small  ones,  since  a 
single  executive  staff  would  do  for  it,  rent,  delivery 
cost,  and  a  hundred  other  fixed  charges  would  be 
reduced,  to  say  nothing  of  the  advantages  of  large 
buying,  and  the  advertising  which  every  department 
would  get  from  all  the  rest  ?  The  idea  grew  into  a 
carefully-formulated  plan,  and  1876  saw  the  start 
of  the  great  Wanamaker  department  store,  perhaps 
the  most  famous  retail  business  in  the  world. 

Its  tremendous  success  is  an  old  story  now,  and  it 
has  found  hundreds  of  imitators.  Twenty  years  af 
ter  the  opening  of  the  Philadelphia  store,  another 
was  opened  in  ^N"ew  York  in  the  old  Stewart  build 
ing,  to  which  another  building,  four  times  as  large,, 
has  recently  been  added.  Wanamaker  from  the  first 
firmly  believed  in  P.  T.  Barnum's  old  adage  that 
"  A  satisfied  customer  is  the  best  advertisement," 
and  he  made  every  effort  to  see  that  none  left  the 
Wanamaker  stores  unsatisfied.  He  also  made  it  a 
rule  that  no  visitor  to  his  store  should  ever  be  urged 
to  buy  anything;  that  every  article  of  merchandise 
should  be  exactly  as  represented,  and  that  any  pur 
chase  might  be  returned  and  the  purchase  money 
would  be  refunded  without  question.  As  a  result, 
Wanamaker  got  a  reputation  for  fair  dealing  which 
proved  his  greatest  asset. 

One  would  think  that  the  management  of  such  a 
business  would  fully  occupy  any  man,  but  Wana 
maker  found  time  for  many  public  and  benevolent 

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Men  of  Affairs 

interests.  He  founded,  in  1858,  the  Bethany  Sun 
day  School,  which  has  grown  into  perhaps  the 
largest  in  the  world  and  of  which  he  has  always  been 
superintendent;  he  has  taken  part  in  many  move 
ments  for  civic  reform,  and  from  1889  to  1893  was 
postmaster  general  of  the  United  States.  He  reor 
ganized  the  service ;  set  in  motion  the  rural  delivery 
system,  the  greatest  single  improvement  in  its  serv 
ice  the  department  has  ever  made;  and  tried  to  se 
cure  a  postal  telegraph,  a  postal  savings-bank,  a  par 
cels  post  and  one-cent  letter  postage.  He  was  the 
first  official  to  regard  the  service  as  a  business  pure 
and  simple,  and  if  the  reforms  he  suggested  had  been 
carried  out,  the  United  States  postoffice  would  now 
be  a  model  for  the  world. 

The  greatest  banker  and  financier  in  America  at 
the  present  day  is  undoubtedly  J.  Pierpont  Morgan, 
who,  however,  is  known  not  so  well  for  the  millions 
he  has  accumulated  as  for  the  other  millions  he  has 
spent  in  collecting  rare  objects  of  art,  until  he  has 
become  the  possessor  of  a  collection  surpassing  any 
ever  possessed  by  another  private  individual.  That 
much  of  this  will  one  day  be  bequeathed  by  its  owner 
to  the  public  there  can  be  little  doubt. 

J.  Pierpont  Morgan  is  of  a  family  of  bankers. 
His  father,  Junius  Spencer  Morgan,  was  for  many 
years  a  partner  in  the  great  London  banking  house 
of  George  Peabody  &  Co.,  and  on  the  retirement  of 
Mr.  Peabody,  succeeded  him  as  the  head  of  the  busi 
ness.  There  was  never  any  doubt  of  the  son's  voca- 

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tion.  Born  in  1837,  and  carefully  educated,  lie 
entered  the  banking  house  of  Duncan,  Sherman  & 
Co.  at  the  age  of  twenty,  and  from  that  time,  rose 
steadily,  until  he  became  the  head  of  the  greatest 
banking  house  in  the  country.  He  has  been  largely 
concerned  in  the  reorganization  of  railways  and  the 
consolidation  of  industrial  properties,  and  the  mag 
nitude  of  some  of  his  operations  is  fairly  astounding. 
During  the  Cleveland  administration,  he  floated  a 
national  bond  issue  of  $62,000,000;  he  marketed  the 
securities  of  the  United  States  Steel  Corporation,  with 
a  capitalization  of  $1,100,000,000 ;  he  secured  Amer 
ican  subscriptions  aggregating  $50,000,000  for  the 
British  war  loan  of  1901 ;  he  controls  over  fifty  thou 
sand  miles  of  railway,  and  his  interests  extend  into 
practically  every  great  financial  enterprise  in  Amer 
ica.  He  has  given  large  sums  of  money  for  public 
enterprises  in  Xew  York  City,  among  them  a  million 
and  a  half  for  a  great  lying-in  hospital.  He  built 
the  "  Columbia,"  which  twice  defeated  the  "  Sham 
rock  "  in  the  races  for  the  America's  cup,  and  he  has 
made  many  valuable  gifts  to  the  various  museums 
and  libraries  of  New  York  City.  The  power  he 
wields  is  enormous,  but  he  wields  it  wisely  and  legit 
imately,  winning  the  respect,  as  well  as  the  admira 
tion  of  men. 

The  greatest  work  of  American  men  of  affairs 
during  the  past  half  century  has  been  the  upbuilding 
and  extension  of  the  railroad  system  of  the  country. 
The  railroad  mileage  of  the  United  States  at  the 

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Men  of  Affairs 

present  time  is  over  three  hundred  and  twenty-five 
thousand ;  the  total  cost  of  the  railroad  equipment  of 
the  country  reaches  fourteen  billion  dollars  and  the 
yearly  earnings  average  over  two  and  a  half  billions. 
They  employ  over  a  million  and  a  half  men,  whose 
wages  average  three  million  dollars  a  day — and,  it 
may  be  added,  they  kill  or  injure  nearly  ninety  thou 
sand.  But  that  is  a  detail.  With  this  vast  develop 
ment  of  the  railroad  business  the  names  of  some  half 
dozen  men  are  so  closely  connected  that  the  great 
systems  of  the  country  are  generally  known  as  the 
Hill  lines,  the  Harriman  lines,  the  Vanderbilt  lines, 
the  Gould  lines,  and  so  on.  Of  these  men  we  shall  try 
to  tell  something  briefly  here. 

We  have  already  related  how  Cornelius  Vander 
bilt  secured  control  of  the  ~New  York  Central  and 
Hudson  Eiver  roads,  and  added  to  these  until  he  had 
secured  an  entrance  into  Chicago;  and  how  his  son, 
William  Henry  Yanderbilt,  added  to  this  system  un 
til  it  became,  and  still  remains,  one  of  the  strong 
est  in  the  country.  We  have  told,  too,  of  Jay  Gould's 
ideas  of  railroad  management,  which  seem  to  have 
been  to  get  the  most  out  of  it  for  Jay  Gould.  But 
when  Jay  Gould  died,  he  was  caught,  as  it  were,  with 
thousands  of  miles  of  railroads  on  his  hands.  He 
left  four  sons,  George  Gould,  Edwin  Gould,  Howard 
Gould  and  Frank  Gould,  of  whom  George  is  the  only 
one  that  really  counts.  But  he,  with  a  real  genius 
for  railroad  building,  has  developed  the  Gould  lines 
into  a  great  system  stretching  from  Buffalo  and 
Pittsburgh  southwestward  to  Chicago,  Omaha,  Kan- 

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sas  City,  Denver,  Ogden,  St.  Louis,  New  Orleans, 
Galveston  and  away  out  to  El  Paso.  These  lines 
have  played  a  most  important  part  in  the  develop 
ment  of  the  great  Southwest,  and  it  is  said  that 
George  Gould  is  already  blazing  a  way  to  the  At 
lantic  seaboard,  as  an  outlet  for  the  mighty  freight 
traffic  which  his  lines  control. 

No  man  connected  with  railroad  building  in  this 
country  has  had  a  more  interesting  or  adventurous, 
career  than  James  J.  Hill.  Born  on  a  little  Cana 
dian  farm  in  1838,  descended  from  the  hardy  Scotch- 
Irish  of  whom  we  have  spoken  so  often,  his  father 
died  when  he  was  fifteen  years,  and  he  was  left  to 
his  own  resources.  He  found  work  as  a  wood-chop 
per,  and  one  day,  while  he  was  chopping  down  a  tree 
a  traveler  stopped  at  the  house  to  take  dinner,  hitch^ 
ing  his  horse  to  the  gate.  The  boy  noticed  that  it 
was  tired  and  fagged  and  carried  it  a  bucket  of 
water.  This  attention  pleased  the  traveler,  and  as  he 
drove  away,  tossed  the  boy  a  Minnesota  newspaper, 
remarking,  "  Go  out  there,  young  man.  That  country 
needs  youngsters  of  your  spirit." 

The  boy  read  the  paper  with  its  glowing  accounts 
of  the  new  country,  and  the  next  morning,  walking 
to  the  tree  he  had  been  cutting  he  hit  it  one  last 
lick  for  luck,  and  announced,  "  IVe  chopped  my  last 
tree."  That  tree,  it  is  said,  bears  to-day  a  great  pla 
card  with  the  words,  "  The  last  tree  chopped  by 
James  J.  Hill."  It  was  the  last  one,  for  a  day  or  two 
later  the  boy  started  for  St.  Paul.  He  brought  with 
him  to  the  United  States  the  lusty  body,  frugal 

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Men  of  Affairs 

instincts  and  good  principles  of  his  Scotch-Irish 
ancestry,  and,  in  addition  to  those,  a  self-confidence 
and  sureness  of  judgment  destined  to  take  him  far. 

He  got  employment  as  a  shipping  clerk  in  a  steam 
boat  office  in  St.  Paul,  and  so  took  his  first  lessons 
in  transportation  problems.  Pretty  soon  he  was 
agent  for  a  steamboat  line,  then  he  established  a  fuel 
and  transportation  business  on  his  own  account  and 
managed  it  so  well  that  by  1873,  he  had  accumulated 
a  fortune  of  a  hundred  thousand  dollars.  There  was 
in  Minnesota  at  the  time  a  little  railroad  called  the 
St.  Paul  &  Pacific.  It  started  at  St.  Paul,  but  it 
stopped  after  it  had  got  only  a  few  hundred  miles 
toward  the  Pacific.  Hill  decided  to  buy  it.  The 
price  was  half  a  million,  so  he  tramped  back  to  Can 
ada  and  persuaded  the  bank  of  Montreal  to  let  him 
have  the  $400,000  he  needed.  That  was  surely  one 
of  the  most  wonderful  feats  of  a  wonderful  career. 
The  directors  of  the  bank  were  severely  criticised; 
men  laughed  at  his  purchase,  pointing  out  that  the 
road  had  never  paid,  and  prophesying  that  it  never 
would  pay. 

Yet  that  Jim  Crow  road  was  the  foundation  of  the 
Great  Northern  system,  the  Hill  line,  stretching 
across  Dakota  and  Montana  to  Puget  Sound.  Every 
man  who  went  into  the  enterprise  with  Hill  now 
owns  his  stock  in  it  as  a  free  gift,  for  in  the  inter 
vening  years,  the  cost  has  been  returned  to  him  in 
the  shape  of  dividends  and  bonuses.  It  has  never 
failed  to  pay  regular  dividends,  and  has,  perhaps, 
won  public  confidence  more  surely  than  any  other 

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in  the  country.  For  James  J.  Hill  has  kept  faith 
in  the  smallest  detail  with  every  man  who  ever 
entrusted  a  dollar  to  his  hands.  The  loyalty  of  the 
employes  of  the  Great  Northern  has  passed  into  a 
proverb,  "  Once  a  Hill  man,  always  a  Hill  man/7 
and  it  is  true.  He  knows  his  road  as  few  other  men 
do.  Before  he  bought  the  St.  Paul  &  Pacific,  he  trav 
eled  over  the  route  in  an  ox-cart,  studying  not  only 
the  road,  but  the  people  along  the  way — there  weren't 
many — and  the  resources  of  the  country.  Before  he 
extended  his  line  to  the  Pacific,  he  went  the  whole 
distance  on  foot  and  horseback. 

People  laughed  at  him  when  he  announced  that 
he  was  going  to  extend  his  line  to  the  Pacific.  No 
line  had  ever  been  built  across  the  continent  without 
a  great  subsidy  from  the  government — to  secure  a 
subsidy  was  always  the  first  step ;  besides,  it  was  be 
lieved  that  the  country  through  which  the  Great  Nor 
thern  was  to  extend  would  not  even  grow  wheat,  and 
the  new  road  was  promptly  dubbed  "  Hill's  Folly." 
But  in  1893,  his  line  reached  the  Pacific.  A  few 
years  later,  the  owners  of  the  great  Northern  Pacific 
were  begging  him  to  manage  that  road,  too.  For  he 
had  created  business  for  his  road — a  great  market  in 
the  Orient  to  fill  his  west-bound  freight  cars,  and  a 
great  market  in  the  eastern  United  States  for  Puget 
Sound  lumber  to  fill  his  east-bound  cars.  For  re 
member  no  railroad  can  make  money  unless,  after 
it  has  hauled  a  loaded  car  from  one  end  of  the  line 
to  the  other,  it  can  find  another  load  to  put  in  that 
same  car  to  haul  back  again.  Hill  supplied  the  busi- 

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ness  and  his  story  is  the  wonderful  story  of  the  de 
velopment  of  the  Great  Northwest. 

Which  brings  us  to  the  Napoleon  of  the  railroad 
world,  E.  H.  Harriman.  America  has  never  seen  an 
other  quite  like  him.  When  the  panic  of  1901  was  at 
its  height  and  the  financial  world  seemed  trembling 
in  ruins  about  his  head,  he  refused  to  break  the 
corner,  as  he  might  have  done,  but  sat  watching  the 
tape,  cool,  quiet  and  calculating,  while  men  failed, 
banks  tottered,  and  his  own  associates  begged  him  to 
yield.  For  the  ambition  of  this  man  knew  no  limi 
tation.  His  kingdom  must  stretch  from  sea  to  sea 
and  from  the  lakes  to  the  gulf. 

His  kingdom  lay  to  the  south  of  Hill's,  for  he 
ruled  the  Union  Pacific,  and  between  the  two  men 
there  was  ceaseless  war.  Physically  and  mentally 
they  were  as  far  apart  as  two  men  could  be.  Hill  is  a 
large  man,  with  massive  head  and  brow,  and  his  eyes 
are  steady  and  cool  and  brown,  his  lips  full  and  sen 
sitive,  his  whole  personality  bespeaking  force  and  de 
cision.  Quite  different  was  Harriman ;  a  small,  ordi 
nary  looking  man,  with  glasses  and  a  scraggy  mus 
tache,  giving  the  impression  of  nervous  force  rather 
than  of  power;  an  irritable  man,  easily  angered;  a 
fighter  clear  through,  but  fighting  sometimes  whenf 
peace  were  wiser — that  was  Harriman. 

Harriman  was  born  at  Hempstead,  Long  Island, 
the  son  of  a  clergyman  with  a  large  family  and  a 
small  income.  The  boy  was  renowned  chiefly  for  his 
daily  fights  and  for  his  aversion  to  study.  At  the 

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age  of  fourteen,  he  was  put  to  work  in  a  broker's 
office  in  Wall  street,  at  eighteen  he  had  a  partner 
ship,  at  twenty-two  he  bought  a  seat  on  the  stock 
exchange,  and  pretty  soon  entered  the  railroad  field 
by  getting  control  of  the  Illinois  Central.  He  at 
once  inaugurated  a  new  policy.  Before  that  time, 
the  prevailing  idea  of  railroad  management  was  to 
run  a  road  as  cheaply  as  possible  and  pay  big  divi 
dends.  Harriman's  idea  was  that  the  biggest  divi 
dends  would  be  secured  in  the  end  by  making  a  good 
road,  and  he  proceeded  to  carry  the  idea  out  by  put 
ting  his  road  in  the  very  pink  of  condition.  And  it 
paid. 

That  was  the  beginning.  His  great  coup  was  the 
rebuilding  of  the  Union  Pacific.  A  railroad  with 
.7,500  miles  of  track,  a  giant  crushed  by  its  own 
weight,  it  had  gone  into  a  receivership  in  the  panic  of 
1893.  For  five  years  it  stayed  there,  despite  the  ut 
most  efforts  of  the  giants  of  finance  to  lift  it  out. 
Then  Harriman  got  possession  of  it,  and  taking  an 
engine  and  a  car,  turned  the  train  backward  and, 
running  in  the  day  time  only,  went  over  the  road 
mile  by  mile.  He  decided  that  the  road  must  be 
made  a  good  road,  and  he  told  his  executive  commit 
tee  that  he  needed  for  his  immediate  necessities  one 
hundred  millions  of  dollars ! 

Well,  he  got  the  money  and  he  got  good  men  and 
went  to  work.  The  result  was  soon  apparent.  Earn 
ings  grew,  business  increased,  and  the  company's 
credit  improved.  Never  before  in  the  history  of  rail 
roading  had  there  been  such  daring  rebuilding.  The 

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Men  of  Affairs 

line  was  levelled  down  to  a  maximum  grade  of  forty- 
one  feet  to  a  mile ;  two  hundred  and  forty-seven  feet 
were  scaled  off  the  top  of  the  Great  Divide ;  millions 
of  cubic  yards  of  dirt  and  stone  were  blasted  out 
and  moved ;  tunnels  were  drilled ;  and,  finally,  when 
the  Southern  Pacific,  too,  was  acquired,  a  trestle 
twenty-three  miles  long  was  built  across  Great  Salt 
Lake,  through  water  thirty  feet  deep,  taking  rail 
road  trains  farther  from  land  than  they  had  ever  yet 
been  run,  and  shortening  the  road  forty-four  miles. 
And  the  result?  The  gross  earnings  have  risen  to 
over  $170,000,000  a  year,  and  $28,000,000  a  year 
are  distributed  in  dividends.  Truly  a  transforma 
tion  from,  the  old  water-logged  road  which  Harriman 
took  over. 

He  had  his  reverses — he  attempted  to  get  hold 
of  the  Northern  Pacific,  but  it  slipped  through  his- 
fingers;  the  Burlington  was  cut  out  from  under  his 
guns,  and  so  was  the  Rock  Island.  James  J.  Hill 
outgeneraled  him  more  than  once,  and  he  was  never 
able  to  "  get  back  "  at  Hill  effectively. 

With  Harriman  we  shall  close  this  chapter  on  men 
of  affairs.  Many  others  might  have  been  noted.  In 
fact,  none  of  the  great  industries  of  the  country  has 
been  built  up  except  by  inspired  work.  Armour  and 
Cudahy  and  Swift  made  the  packing  business ;  Mar 
shall  Field  built  up  a  business  in  Chicago  rivalling 
Wanamaker's;  August  Belmont,  William  C.  Whit 
ney,  Levi  Leiter,  Eobert  Goelet,  Pierre  Lorillard, 
and  a  hundred  others,  amassed  great  fortunes.  Yet 
there  was  nothing  in  their  career  different  to  those 

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of  the  men  already  considered  in  this  chapter.  They 
had  a  genius  for  money-making.  Each  in  some  spe 
cial  field;  but,  beyond  that,  they  did  few  memorable 
things.  And  so  we  need  not  pause  longer  over  them 
here,  except  to  remark  that  it  is,  in  the  main,  to  such 
men  as  these,  that  America  owes  her  great  material 
prosperity. 

SUMMARY 

MORRIS,  EGBERT.  Born  at  Liverpool,  England,  Jan 
uary  20,  1734;  came  to  America,  1747,  and  settled  at 
Philadelphia;  delegate  to  Continental  Congress,  1775- 
78;  gave  his  credit  to  assist  in  financing  Eevolution 
and  elected  superintendent  of  finance,  1781;  organized 
Bank  of  North  America,  1781;  member  of  Constitu 
tional  Convention,  1787;  United  States  senator,  1789- 
95;  died  in  debtor's  prison  at  Philadelphia,  May  8, 
1806. 

ASTOR,  JOHN-  JACOB.  Born  at  Waldorf,  Germany, 
July  17,  1763;  came  to  America,  1783,  and  settled  at 
New  York  City;  founded  Astoria,  at  mouth  of  Colum 
bia  River,  1811;  died  at  New  York  City,  March  29, 
1848. 

VANDERBILT,  CORNELIUS.  Born  near  Stapleton, 
Staten  Island,  New  York,  May  27,  1794;  became  chief 
owner  Harlem  railroad,  1863,  and  of  Hudson  River  and 
New  York  Central  roads  soon  afterwards;  died  at  New 
York  City,  January  4,  1877. 

STEWART,  ALEXANDER  TURNEY.  Born  near  Belfast, 
Ireland,  October  12,  1803;  came  to  America,  1823,  and 
established  drygoods  business  at  New  York  City;  died 
there  April  10,  1876. 

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Men  of  Affairs 

BARNUM,  PHINEAS  TAYLOR.  Born  at  Bethel,  Con 
necticut,  July  5,  1810;  opened  Barnum's  Museum  in 
New  York  City,  1841;  managed  Jenny  Lind's  concert 
tour,  1850-51 ;  established  "  Greatest  Show  on  Earth," 
1871;  died  at  Bridgeport,  Connecticut,  April  7,  1891.. 

SAGE,  EUSSELL.  Born  in  Oneida  Count}%  New  York, 
August  4,  1816;  member  of  Congress,  1853—57;  estab 
lished  himself  as  broker  and  money-lender  in  New  York 
City,  1863;  died  there,  July  22,  1906. 

FIELD,  CYRUS  WEST.  Born  at  Stockbridge,  Massa 
chusetts,  November  30,  1819 ;  in  paper  business  in  New 
York,  1840-53,  retiring  with  a  fortune;  organized  New 
York,  Newfoundland  &  London  Telegraph  Company, 
1854;  Atlantic  Telegraph  Company,  1856;  laid  Atlan 
tic  cable,  1866;  first  message  over  it,  July  29;  died  at 
New  York  City,  July  12,  1892. 

MACKAY,  JOHN  WILLIAM.  Born  at  Dublin,  Ireland, 
November  28,  1831;  came  with  parents  to  America, 
1840;  went  to  California,  1850;  discovered  Bonanza 
mines,  1872;  died,  July  20,  1902. 

GOULD,  JAY.  Born  at  Eoxbury,  New  York,  May  27, 
1836;  established  himself  as  broker  in  New  York  City, 
1859 ;  notorious  for  manipulations  of  various  railroad 
and  other  securities,  and  for  "  Black  Friday  " ;  died  at 
New  York  City,  December  2,  1892. 

WANAMAKER,  JOHN.  Born  at  Philadelphia,  July  11, 
1838;  established  clothing  house  of  Wanamaker  & 
Brown,  1861 ;  established  department  store  in  Phila 
delphia,  1876,  and  in  New  York  City,  1896;  Postmas 
ter-General,  1889-93 ;  founded  Bethany  Sunday  School, 
1858;  president  Philadelphia  Y.  M.  C.  A.,  1870-83. 

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MORGAN,  JOHN  PIERPONT.  Born  at  Hartford,  Con 
necticut,  April  17,  1837;  entered  banking  business, 
1857,  and  developed  present  firm  of  J.  P.  Morgan  & 
Co.,  largest  private  bankers  of  the  United  States. 

HILL,  JAMES  J.  Born  near  Guelph,  Ontario,  Sep 
tember  16,  1838;  removed  to  Minnesota,  1856;  entered 
transportation  business;  general  manager  St.  Paul, 
Minneapolis  &  Manitoba  Ey.  Co.,  1879-82;  president 
since  1883;  built  Great  Northern,  with  steamship  con 
nection  with  Japan  and  China,  1883-93;  president  of 
Great  Northern  system  since  1893. 

HARRIMAN,  EDWARD  HENRY.  Born  at  Hempstead, 
Long  Island;  entered  Wall  Street  as  clerk  at  age  of 
fourteen;  entered  New  York  Stock  Exchange  eight 
years  later;  was  president  and  chairman  of  the  board 
of  directors  of  the  Union  Pacific,  Oregon  Short  Line, 
Southern  Pacific,  Texas  &  New  Orleans,  and  many 
other  great  railway  systems ;  died  near  New  York  City, 
September  9,  1909. 


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INVENTORS 

IT  is  a  curious  fact  that  the  men  to  whom  the 
world  owes  most  generally  get  the  least  reward. 
The  genius  in  art  or  letters  is  seldom  recognized  as 
such  until  long  after  he  himself  has  passed  away — 
his  life  is  usually  embittered  by  derision  or  neglect. 
But,  in  the  history  of  civilization,  the  lot  of  no  man 
has  been  harder  or  more  thankless  than  that  of  the 
inventor.  Poverty  and  want  have  always  been  his 
portion,  and  even  after  he  had  won  his  triumph,  had 
compelled  public  recognition  of  some  great  invention, 
it  was  usually  some  one  else  who  won  the  reward. 

America  has  been  especially  strong  in  the  field  of 
invention.  Indeed,  practically  all  the  great  labor- 
saving  devices  of  the  past  century  and  more  have 
originated  here.  "  Yankee  ingenuity  "  has  passed 
into  a  proverb,  and  a  true  one,  for  the  country  which 
has  produced  the  steamboat,  the  cotton  gin,  the  sew 
ing  machine,  the  electric  telegraph,  the  phonograph, 
the  telephone,  the  typewriter,  the  reaper  and  binder, 
to  mention  only  a  few  of  the  achievements  of  Amer 
ican  inventors,  may  surely  claim  first  place  in  this 
respect  among  the  nations  of  the  world.  There  are 
few  stories  more  inspiring  than  that  of  American  in- 

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vention,  and  as  benefactors  to  their  race,  the  long  line 
of  American  inventors  may  rightly  rank  before  even 
the  great  philanthropists  whose  careers  are  outlined 
elsewhere  in  this  volume.  Indeed,  if  we  judge  great 
ness  by  the  benefits  which  a  man  confers  upon  man 
kind,  such  men  as  Whitney  and  Howe  and  Morse  and 
Bell  and  Edison  far  surpass  most  of  the  great  char 
acters  of  history. 

First  of  the  line  is  Benjamin  Franklin,  whose 
many-sided  genius  gives  him  a  unique  place  in 
American  history.  His  career  has  been  considered 
in  the  chapter  dealing  with  our  statesmen,  but  let  us 
pause  for  a  moment  here  to  speak  of  his  inventions. 
One  of  them,  the  Franklin  stove,  is  still  in  use  in 
hundreds  of  old  houses,  and  as  an  economizer  of 
fuel  has  never  been  surpassed ;  another  was  the  light 
ning-rod,  lie  introduced  the  basket  willow,  the 
water-tight  compartment  for  ships,  the  culture  of 
silk,  the  use  of  white  clothing  in  hot  weather,  and 
the  use  of  oil  to  quiet  a  tempest-tossed  sea.  From 
none  of  his  inventions  did  he  seek  to  get  any  return. 
The  Governor  of  Pennsylvania  offered  to  give  him  a 
monopoly  of  the  sale  of  the  Franklin  stove  for  a 
period  of  years,  but  he  declined  it,  saying,  "  That, 
as  wre  enjoy  great  advantages  from  the  inventions  of 
others,  we  should  be  glad  to  serve  others  by  any  in 
vention  of  ours  "  —  a  principle  characteristic  of 
Franklin's  whole  philosophy  of  life. 

After  Franklin,  came  Kobert  Fulton,  the  first  man 
successfully  to  apply  the  power  of  the  steam-engine 
to  the  propulsion  of  boats.  Everyone  has  heard  the 

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story  of  how,  years  before,  the  youthful  James  Watt 
first  got  his  idea  of  the  power  of  steam  by  noticing 
how  it  rattled  the  lid  on  his  mother's  boiling  tea 
kettle.  From  that  came  the  stationary  engine,  and 
from  that  the  engine  as  applied  to  the  locomotive.  It 
remained  for  Fulton  to  apply  it  to  water  navigation. 

Born  in  Lancaster  County,  Pennsylvania,  of  Irish 
parents,  in  poor  circumstances,  the  boy  received  only 
the  rudiments  of  an  education,  but  developed  a  sur 
prising  talent  for  painting,  so  that,  when  he  was 
seventeen,  he  removed  to  Philadelphia  and  set  up 
there  as  an  artist,  painting  portraits  and  landscapes. 
He  remained  there  for  some  years,  and  finally,  hav 
ing  made  enough  money  to  purchase  a  small  farm  for 
his  mother,  sailed  for  London,  where  he  introduced 
himself  to  that  amiable  patron  of  all  American  paint 
ers,  Benjamin  West.  West,  who  was  at  that  time  at 
the  height  of  his  fame,  received  Fulton  with  great 
kindness,  and  made  a  place  in  his  house  for  him, 
where  he  remained  for  several  years. 

Those  years  were  not  devoted  exclusively  to  paint 
ing,  for  Fulton  had  developed  an  interest  in  mechan 
ics,  secured  a  patent  for  an  improvement  in  canal 
locks,  invented  a  "  plunging "  boat,  a  kind  of  sub 
marine,  a  machine  for  spinning  flax,  one  for  making 
ropes,  one  for  sawing  marble,  and  many  others  of 
minor  importance.  Finally  abandoning  art  alto 
gether,  he  went  to  Paris,  where  he  spent  seven  years 
with  the  family  of  Joel  Barlow,  conducting  with  him 
a  number  of  experiments;  one  series  of  which  has 
developed  into  the  modern  submarine  torpedo.  He 

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succeeded  in  interesting  the  French  government  in 
his  submarine  experiments  and  constructed  a  boat 
equipped  with  a  small  engine,  with  which,  in  the 
harbor  of  Brest,  he  seems  actually  to  have  made  some 
progress  under  water,  remaining  under  on  one  occa 
sion  for  more  than  four  hours.  But  the  French  gov 
ernment  finally  withdrew  its  support,  and  finding 
the  British  government  also  indifferent,  Fulton 
sailed  for  New  York  in  December,  1806. 

Here,  he  succeeded  in  interesting  the  United 
States  government,  which  granted  him  $5,000  to 
continue  his  submarine  experiments,  but  interest  in 
them  soon  waned,  and  Fulton  turned  his  whole  at 
tention  to  the  subject  of  steam  navigation.  He  had 
been  experimenting  in  this  direction  for  a  number 
of  years,  and,  in  conjunction  with  Chancellor  Liv 
ingston,  of  New  Jersey,  had  secured  from  the  legis 
lature  of  New  York  the  exclusive  right  and  privilege 
of  navigating  all  kinds  of  boats  which  might  be  pro 
pelled  by  the  force  of  fire  or  steam  on  all  the  waters 
within  the  territory  of  New  York  for  a  period  of 
twenty  years,  provided  he  would,  by  the  end  of  1807y 
produce  a  boat  that  would  attain  a  speed  of  four  miles 
an  hour.  Fulton  went  to  work  at  once,  the  experi 
ments  being  paid  for  by  Livingston,  and  after  vari 
ous  calculations,  discarded  the  use  of  paddles  or  oars, 
of  ducks'  feet  which  open  as  they  are  pushed  out  and 
close  as  they  are  drawn  in,  and  also  the  idea  of  forc 
ing  water  out  of  the  stern  of  the  vessel.  He  finally 
decided  on  the  paddle-wheel,  and,  in  August,  1807, 
the  first  American  steamboat  appeared  on  the  East 

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Inventors 

River.  A  great  concourse  witnessed  the  first  trial, 
incredulous  at  first,  but  converted  into  enthusiastic 
believers  before  the  boat  had  gone  a  quarter  of 
a  mile. 

She  was  christened  the  "  Clermont,"  and  soon  after 
wards  made  a  trip  up  the  Hudson  to  Albany,  to  the 
astonishment  of  the  people  living  along  the  banks  of 
that  mighty  river.  The  distance  of  150  miles,  against 
the  current  of  the  river,  was  covered  in  thirty-two 
hours,  and  there  could  no  longer  be  any  question  of 
Fulton's  success.  A  regular  schedule  between  Albany 
and  New  York  was  established,  and  the  "  Clermont " 
began  that  great  river  traffic  now  carried  on  by  the 
most  palatial  river  steamers  in  the  world. 

After  that,  it  was  merely  a  question  of  develop 
ment.  More  boats  were  built,  improvements  were 
made,  and  every  year  witnessed  an  increase  of  speed 
and  efficiency.  In  1814,  in  the  midst  of  the  second 
war  with  England,  Fulton  built  the  first  steam  ship- 
of-war  the  world  had  ever  seen,  designed  for  the  de 
fense  of  New  York  harbor.  This  ancestor  of  the 
modern  "  Dreadnought "  was  named  "  Fulton  the 
First "  in  honor  of  her  designer.  She  indirectly 
caused  his  death,  for,  exposing  himself  for  several 
hours  of  a  bitter  winter  day,  in  supervising  some 
changes  on  her,  he  developed  pneumonia  and  died  a 
few  days  later.  Could  he  re-visit  the  world  to-day 
and  see  the  wonderful  and  mighty  ships  which  have 
grown  out  of  his  idea,  he  would  no  doubt  be  as  aston 
ished  as  were  the  people  along  the  Hudson  on  that 
fall  day  in  1807  when  they  saw  the  "  Clermont " 

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making  her  way  up  the  stream  against  wind  and 
tide. 

The  same  year  that  Eobert  Fulton  was  born,  an 
other  inventive  genius  first  saw  the  light  in  the  little 
town  of  Westborough,  Massachusetts.  His  name  was 
Eli  Whitney,  and  the  work  he  was  to  do  revolution 
ized  the  industrial  development  of  the  South,  paid 
off  its  debts,  and  trebled  the  value  of  its  lands.  It 
did  something  else,  too,  which  was  to  fasten  upon, 
the  South  the  system  of  negro  slavery,  resulting  in 
the  Civil  War.  But  though  he  added  hundreds  of 
millions  of  dollars  to  the  wealth  of  his  country,  his 
own  reward  was  neglect,  indifference,  countless  law 
suits  and  endless  vexation  of  body  and  spirit. 

Whitney's  father  ran  a  little  wood-working  shop 
where  he  made  wheels  and  chairs,  and  there  the  boy 
spent  every  possible  hour.  At  the  age  of  twelve,  he 
made  himself  a  violin,  and  his  progress  was  so 
steady,  that  by  the  time  he  was  sixteen,  he  had 
greatly  enlarged  the  business  and  had  gained  the  re 
putation  of  being  the  best  mechanic  in  all  the  country 
round.  He  soon  discovered  the  value  of  education, 
and  managed  to  prepare  himself  for  Yale  College, 
which  he  entered  in  1789,  at  the  age  of  twenty-four 
— an  age  at  which  most  men  had  long  since  gradu 
ated  and  settled  in  life.  But  Whitney  persevered, 
graduating  in  1792,  and  almost  immediately  secur 
ing  a  position  as  private  tutor  in  a  Georgia  family, 
which  was  to  change  the  whole  course  of  his  life. 

Until  he  reached  the  South,  he  had  never  seen  raw 
cotton,  only  a  little  of  which,  indeed,  had  been  raised 

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Inventors 

in  the  United  States.  It  had  not  been  profitable  be 
cause  of  the  difficulty  of  picking  out  the  green  cotton 
seed.  To  separate  one  pound  of  the  staple  from  the 
seed  was  a  day's  work,  so  that  cotton  was  considered 
rather  as  a  curiosity  than  as  a  profitable  crop.  Whit 
ney  was  impressed  by  the  possibilities  of  cotton  cul 
ture,  could  this  obstacle  be  overcome,  and  devoted 
his  spare  time  to  the  construction  of  the  machine 
upon  which  his  fame  rests.  At  last  it  was  done,  and 
did  its  work  so  perfectly  that  there  could  be  no  ques 
tion  of  its  success.  Experiments  showed  that  with  it, 
one  man,  with  the  aid  of  two-horse  power,  could 
clean  five  thousand  pounds  of  cotton  a  day! 

A  patent  was  at  once  applied  for  and  every  effort 
made  to  keep  the  invention  a  secret  until  a  patent 
had  been  secured.  But  knowledge  of  it  swept  through 
the  state,  and  great  crowds  of  people  came  to  see  the 
machine.  Whitney  refused  to  show  it,  and  after 
much  excitement,  a  mob  one  night  broke  into  the 
building  where  it  was,  and  carried  it  away.  Others 
were  at  once  made,  using  it  as  a  model,  and  by  the 
time  Whitney  had  secured  his  patent,  they  were  in 
successful  operation  in  many  parts  of  the  state. 

That  was  the  beginning  of  Whitney's  trials.  He 
had  not  enough  money  to  produce  machines  rapidly 
enough  to  meet  the  tremendous  demand  for  them, 
and  various  rivals  sprang  up,  some  of  them  even 
claiming  the  honor  of  the  invention.  Other  gins 
were  put  on  the  market,  differing  from  Whitney's 
only  in  some  unimportant  detail,  and  plainly  an  in 
fringement  of  his  patent;  but  he  had  not  the  means 

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to  prosecute  their  manufacturers.  The  result  wasr 
that  after  two  years  of  disheartening  struggle,  Whit 
ney  was  reduced  to  bankruptcy. 

The  attitude  of  the  South  toward  him  caused  him 
especial  distress.  "  I  have  invented  a  machine/'  he 
wrote,  "  from  which  the  citizens  of  the  South  have 
already  realized  immense  profits,  which  is  worth  to 
them  millions,  and  from  which  they  must  continue 
to  derive  the  most  important  profits,  and  in  return  to 
be  treated  as  a  felon,  a  swindler,  and  a  villain,  has 
stung  me  to  the  very  soul.  And  when  I  consider  that 
this  cruel  persecution  is  inflicted  by  the  very  persona 
who  are  enjoying  these  great  benefits,  and  expressly 
for  the  purpose  of  preventing  my  ever  deriving  the 
least  advantage  from  my  labors,  the  acuteness  of  my 
feelings  is  altogether  inexpressible." 

Finally,  the  states  of  North  and  South  Carolina 
voted  him  a  royalty  upon  all  the  machines  in  use, 
and  this  enabled  him  to  pay  his  debts ;  but  Whitney 
at  last  abandoned  hope  of  ever  receiving  from  his 
invention  the  returns  he  had  hoped  for,  and,  turn 
ing  his  attention  to  other  business,  received,  in  1798, 
a  contract  from  the  United  States  government  for 
10,000  stand  of  arms.  Eight  years  were  consumed 
in  filling  this  contract.  A  contract  for  30,000  stand 
followed,  and  so  many  improvements  in  design  and 
process  of  manufacture  were  made  by  Whitney  that 
no  other  manufacturer  could  compete  with  him. 

The  result  of  all  this  was  that  Whitney  was  en 
abled  to  end  his  life  in  comparative  independence. 
His  last  days  were  his  happiest,  and  he  found  in 

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Inventors 

the  care  and  affection  of  a  loving  family  some  con 
solation  for  the  injustice  and  ingratitude  "which  he 
had  suffered. 

Sixteen  years  after  the  battle  of  Bunker  Hill,  a 
boy  was  born  in  a  great  frame  house  at  the  foot  of 
Breed's  Hill,  upon  which  that  famous  and  misnamed 
battle  was  really  fought.  The  boy's  father  was  a 
preacher  named  Jedediah  Morse,  and  the  boy  was 
named  Samuel  Finley,  after  his  maternal  great  grand 
father,  the  renowned  president  of  Princeton  College, 
and  Breese,  after  his  mother's  maiden  name,  so  that 
he  comes  down  through  history  as  S.  F.  B.  Morse. 
He  received  a  thorough  schooling,  graduating  from 
Yale  in  1807,  and  at  once  turned  his  attention  to 
art.  "We  have  already  spoken  of  his  achievements  in 
that  respect,  which  were  really  of  the  first  import 
ance.  He  was  an  artist,  heart  and  soul,  but  the 
whole  course  of  his  life  was  to  be  changed  in  a  re 
markable  fashion. 

In  the  autumn  of  1832,  Morse,  being  at  that  time 
forty-one  years  of  age,  sailed  from  Havre  for  New 
York  in  the  ship  Sully.  It  happened  that  there  were 
on  board  some  scientists  who  had  been  interested  in 
electrical  development,  and  the  talk  one  evening 
turned  on  electricity.  Morse  knew  little  about  it, 
except  what  he  had  learned  in  a  few  lectures  heard  at 
Yale;  but  when  somebody  asked  how  long  it  took  a 
current  of  electricity  to  pass  through  a  wire,  and 
when  the  answer  was  that  the  passage  was  instantane 
ous,  his  interest  was  aroused. 

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"  If  that  is  the  case,"  he  said,  "  and  if  the  passage 
of  the  current  can  be  made  visible  or  audible,  there  is 
no  reason  why  intelligence  cannot  be  transmitted  in 
stantaneously  by  electricity." 

The  company  broke  up,  after  a  while,  but  Morse, 
filled  with  his  great  idea,  went  on  deck,  and  at  the 
end  of  an  hour  had  jotted  down  in  his  notebook  the 
first  skeleton  of  the  "  Morse  alphabet."  Before  he 
reached  New  York,  he  had  made  drawings  and  speci 
fications  of  his  invention,  which  he  seems  to  have 
grasped  clearly  and  completely  from  the  first,  al 
though  its  details  were  worked  out  only  by  laborious 
thought.  It  was  necessary  for  him  to  earn  a  living, 
and  not  until  three  years  later  was  the  first  rude 
instrument  completed.  Two  years  more,  and  he  had 
a  short  line  in  operation,  but  it  was  looked  upon  as  a 
scientific  toy  constructed  by  an  unfortunate  dreamer. 
Finally,  in  1838,  Morse  appeared  before  Congress, 
exhibited  his  invention  and  asked  aid  to  construct 
an  experimental  line  between  Washington  and  Balti 
more.  He  was  laughed  at,  and  for  twelve  years  an 
extraordinary  struggle  ensued,  Morse  laboring  to 
convince  the  world  of  the  value  of  his  invention,  and 
the  world  scoffing  at  him.  His  own  situation  was 
forlorn  in  the  extreme ;  for  his  painting  was  his  only 
means  of  livelihood,  and,  absorbed  as  he  was  by  his 
great  invention,  he  found  painting  utterly  impossible. 
His  home  was  a  single  room  in  the  fifth  story  of  a 
building  at  the  corner  of  Nassau  and  Beekman 
streets  in  New  York  City — a  room  which  served  as 
studio,  workshop,  parlor,  kitchen  and  bedroom.  There 

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Inventors 

lie  labored  and  slept,  using  such  money  as  he  could 
earn  for  his  experiments,  and  almost  starving  him 
self  in  consequence. 

But  at  last  the  tide  turned.  He  was  appointed  to  a 
position  in  the  University  of  the  City  of  New  York, 
which  provided  him  with  hetter  means  for  experi 
ment,  and  in  1843,  again  appeared  before  Congress, 
This  time,  he  found  some  backers,  and  by  a  close 
vote,  at  the  last  hour  of  the  session,  an  appropria 
tion  of  $30,000  was  made  to  enable  him  to  construct 
a  line  between  Washington  and  Baltimore.  Wild 
with  delight  and  enthusiasm,  the  inventor  went  to 
work,  and  on  the  twenty-fourth  day  of  May,  1844, 
the  first  message  flashed  over  the  wire,  "  What  hath 
God  wrought!  " 

The  wonder  and  amazement  of  the  public  can  be 
better  imagined  than  described.  Morse  offered  to- 
sell  his  invention  to  the  government  for  the  sum  of 
$100,000,  but  the  Postmaster  General,  a  thick 
headed  individual  named  Cave  Johnson,  refused  the 
offer,  stating  that  in  his  opinion,  no  line  would  ever 
pay  for  the  cost  of  operation ! 

It  was  inevitable  that  rival  claimants  for  the  honor 
of  the  invention  should  crop  up  on  every  side,  but, 
after  years  of  bitter  litigation,  Morse  succeeded  in. 
defending  his  title,  and  honors  began  to  pour  in  upon/ 
him.     It  is  worth  remarking  that  the  Sultan  of  Tur«n 
key,  supposedly  the  most  benighted  of  all  rulers,  was 
the  first  monarch  to  acknowledge  Morse  as  a  public 
benefactor.     That  was  in  1848;  but  the  monarchs 
of  Europe  soon  followed,  and  in  1858,  a  special  con- 

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gress  was  called  by  the  Emperor  of  the  French  to 
devise  some  suitable  testimonial  to  the  great  inven 
tor.  But  perhaps  the  most  fitting  testimonial  of  all 
•were  the  ceremonies  at  the  unveiling  of  the  Morse 
monument  in  New  York  City  in  1871.  Delegates 
were  present  from  every  state  in  the  Union,  and  at 
the  close  of  the  reception,  William  Orton,  president 
of  the  Western  Union  Telegraph  Company,  an 
nounced  that  the  telegraph  instrument  before  the 
audience  was  in  connection  with  every  other  one  of 
the  ten  thousand  instruments  in  America,  and  that, 
beside  every  instrument  an  operator  was  waiting  to 
receive  a  message.  Then  a  young  operator  sent  this 
message  from  the  key :  "  Greeting  and  thanks  to  the 
telegraph  fraternity  throughout  the  world.  Glory 
to  God  in  the  highest;  on  earth,  peace,  good-will  to 
men."  Then  the  venerable  inventor,  the  personifica 
tion  of  dignity,  simplicity  and  kindliness,  bent  above 
the  key,  and  sent  out,  "  S.  F.  B.  Morse."  A  storm 
of  enthusiasm  swept  over  the  audience,  and  the  scene 
•will  never  be  forgotten  by  any  who  took  part  in  it. 
The  proudest  boast  of  many  an  old  operator  is  that 
he  received  that  message.  Death  came  to  the  inven 
tor  a  year  later,  and  on  the  day  of  his  funeral,  every 
telegraph  office  throughout  the  land  was  draped  in 
mourning. 

Although  to  Morse  belongs  all  the  credit  for  the  in 
vention  of  the  telegraph,  it  should,  in  justice  to  one 
man,  be  pointed  out  that  it  would  have  been  impossi 
ble  but  for  a  discovery  which  preceded  it — that  of 
the  electro-magnet.  To  Joseph  Henry,  the  great  phy- 

338 


Inventors 

sicist,  first  of  Princeton,  then  of  the  Smithsonian 
Institution,  this  invention  is  chiefly  due.  We  have 
already  spoken  of  Professor  Henry's  work  in  science, 
but  none  of  it  was  more  important  than  his  inven 
tion,  in  1828,  of  the  modern  form  of  electro-magnet 
— a  coil  of  silk-covered  wire  wound  in  a  series  of 
crossed  layers  around  a  soft  iron  core,  and  in  1831, 
he  had  used  it  to  produce  the  ringing  of  a  bell  at  a 
distance.  It  is  this  magnet  which  forms  the  basis 
of  every  telegraph  instrument — is  essential  to  it, 
and  is  the  foundation  of  the  entire  electrical  art. 
Let  it  be  added  to  this  great  scientist's  credit  that 
he  never  sought  to  patent  any  of  his  inventions, 
giving  them,  as  Franklin  had  done,  free  to  all  the 
world. 

The  struggle  which  Morse  made  to  perfect  and 
secure  public  recognition  of  his  telegraph  and  the 
injustice  shown  Eli  Whitney  by  the  people  of 
the  South,  were  as  nothing  when  compared  with  the 
trials  of  that  most  unfortunate  of  all  inventors, 
Charles  Goodyear,  whose  story  is  one  of  the  most 
tragic  in  American  annals.  No  one  can  read  of  his 
struggles  without  experiencing  the  deepest  admira 
tion  for  a  man  who,  at  the  time,  was  regarded  as  a 
hopeless  lunatic. 

Charles  Goodyear  was  born  at  New  Haven,  Con 
necticut,  in  1800.  While  he  was  still  a  child,  his 
father  moved  to  Philadelphia  and  engaged  in  the 
hardware  business,  in  which  his  son  joined  him,  as 
soon  as  he  was  old  enough  to  do  so.  But  the  panic 
of  1836  wiped  the  business  out  of  existence,  and 

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Goodyear  was  forced  to  look  around  for  some  other 
means  of  livelihood.  He  had  been  interested  for 
some  time  in  the  wonderful  success  of  some  newly- 
established  India-rubber  companies,  and,  out  of  curi 
osity,  bought  an  India-rubber  life-preserver.  Upon 
examining  it,  he  found  a  defect  in  tke  valve,  and  in 
venting  an  improvement  in  it,  he  went  to  New  York 
with  the  intention  of  selling  his  improvement  to  the 
manufacturer.  The  manufacturer  was  impressed 
with  the  new  device,  but  told  Goodyear  frankly  that 
the  whole  India-rubber  business  of  the  country  was 
011  the  verge  of  collapse,  and  indeed,  the  collapse 
came  a  few  months  later. 

The  trouble  was  that  the  goods  which  the  rubber 
companies  had  been  turning  out  were  not  durable. 
The  use  of  rubber  had  begun  about  fifteen  years  be 
fore,  first  in  France  in  the  manufacture  of  garters 
and  suspenders,  and  then  in  England  where  a  manu 
facturer  named  Mackintosh  made  water-proof  coats 
by  spreading  a  layer  of  rubber  between  two  layers  of 
cloth.  Then,  in  1833,  the  Koxbury  India-Eubber 
Company  was  organized  in  the  United  States,  and 
manufactured  an  India-rubber  cloth  from  which 
wagon-covers,  caps,  coats,  and  other  articles  were 
made.  Its  success  was  so  great  that  other  com 
panies  were  organized  and  seemed  on  the  highroad 
to  fortune,  wrhen  a  sudden  reverse  came.  For  the 
heat  of  summer  melted  wagon-covers,  caps  and  coats 
to  sticky  masses  with  an  odor  so  offensive  that  they 
had  to  be  buried.  So  the  business  collapsed,  the  vari 
ous  companies  went  into  bankruptcy,  and  the  very 

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Inventors 

name  of  India-rubber  came  to  be  detested  by  pro 
ducers  and  consumers  alike. 

It  was  at  this  time  that  Charles  Goodyear  ap 
peared  upon  the  scene — unfortunately  enough  for 
himself,  but  fortunately  for  humanity — and  deter 
mined  to  discover  some  method  by  which  rubber 
could  be  made  to  withstand  the  extremes  of  heat  and 
cold.  From  that  time  until  the  close  of  his  life,  he  de 
voted  himself  wholly  to  this  work,  in  the  face  of  such 
hardships  and  discouragements  as  few  other  men  have 
ever  experienced.  He  began  his  experiments  at  once, 
and  finally  hit  upon  magnesia  as  a  substance  which, 
mixed  with  rubber,  seemed  to  give  it  lasting  proper 
ties  ;  but  a  month  later,  the  mixture  began  to  ferment 
and  became  as  hard  and  brittle  as  glass. 

His  stock  of  money  was  soon  exhausted,  his  own 
valuables,  and  even  the  trinkets  of  his  wife  were 
pawned,  but  Goodyear  never  for  an  instant  thought 
of  giving  up  the  problem  which  he  had  set  himself 
to  solve.  Again  he  believed  he  had  discovered  the 
secret  by  boiling  the  solution  of  rubber  and  magnesia 
is  quicklime  and  water,  when  he  found  to  his  dismay 
that  a  drop  of  the  weakest  acid,  such  as  the  juice  of 
an  apple,  would  reduce  an  apparently  fine  sheet  of 
rubber  to  a  sticky  mass.  The  first  real  step  in  the 
right  direction  was  made  by  accident,  for,  in  remov 
ing  some  bronzing  from  a  piece  of  rubber  with  aqua 
fortis,  he  found  that  the  chemical  worked  a  remark 
able  change  in  the  rubber,  which  would  now  stand  a 
degree  of  heat  that  would  have  melted  it  before. 
He  called  this  "  curing  "  India-rubber,  and  after  care- 

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ful  tests,  patented  the  process,  secured  a  partner  with 
capital,  rented  an  old  India-rubber  works  on  Staten 
Island,  and  set  to  work,  full  of  hope.  But  commer 
cial  disaster  swept  away  his  partner's  fortune,  and 
Goodyear  could  find  no  one  else  who  would  risk  his 
money  in  so  doubtful  an  enterprise. 

Indeed,  in  all  America  he  seemed  to  be  the  only 
man  who  had  the  slightest  hope  of  accomplishing 
anything  with  India-rubber.  His  friends  regarded 
him  as  a  lunatic,  and  especially  when  he  made  him 
self  a  suit  of  clothes  out  of  his  India-rubber  cloth, 
and  wore  it  on  all  occasions.  One  day  a  man  looking 
for  Goodyear  asked  one  of  the  latter's  friends  how  he 
would  recognize  him  if  he  met  him. 

"  If  you  see  a  man  with  an  India-rubber  coat  on," 
was  the  reply,  "  India-rubber  shoes,  India-rubber  hat, 
and  in  his  pocket  an  India-rubber  purse  with  not  a 
cent  in  it,  that's  Goodyear." 

The  description  was  a  good  one,  for  that  purse 
had  been  without  a  cent  in  it  for  a  long  time.  It 
was  to  stay  empty  for  some  weary  years  longer.  For 
he  had  not  yet  discovered  the  secret  of  making  India- 
rubber  permanent,  as  he  found  when  he  tried  to  fill 
a  contract  for  a  hundred  and  fifty  mail  bags  ordered 
by  the  government.  The  bags  were  apparently  per 
fect,  but  in  less  than  a  month  began  to  soften  and  fer 
ment  and  were  thrown  back  on  his  hands.  All  his 
property  was  seized  and  sold  for  debt ;  his  family  was 
reduced  to  the  point  of  starvation,  and  friends,  rela 
tives  and  even  his  wife  joined  in  demanding  that 
he  abandon  this  useless  quest. 

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Inventors 

Goodyear  was  in  despair,  for  he  had  just  made  an-' 
other  discovery  that  seemed  to  promise  success — the 
discovery  that  sulphur  was  the  active  "  curing " 
agent  for  India-rubber,  and  that  it  was  the  sulphuric 
acid  in  aqua  fortis  which  had  wrought  the  changes 
in  rubber  which  he  had  noticed  in  his  experiments. 
One  day,  while  explaining  the  properties  of  a  sul 
phur-cured  piece  of  rubber  to  an  incredulous  crowd 
in  a  country-store,  he  happened  to  let  it  fall  on  the 
red-hot  stove.  To  his  amazement  it  did  not  melt ;  it 
had  shrivelled  some,  but  had  not  softened.  And,  at 
last,  he  had  the  key,  which  was  that  rubber  mixed 
with  sulphur  and  subjected  to  a  certain  degree  of 
heat,  would  be  rendered  impervious  to  any  extremes 
of  temperature ! 

But  what  degree  of  heat?  He  experimented  in 
the  oven  of  his  wife's  cooking-stove,  and  in  every 
other  kind  of  oven  to  which  he  could  gain  access ;  he 
induced  a  brick-layer  to  make  him  an  oven,  paying 
him  in  rubber  aprons ;  he  grew  yellow  and  shrivelled, 
for  he  and  his  family  were  living  upon  the  charity 
of  neighbors ;  more  than  once,  there  was  not  a  morsel 
of  food  in  the  house ;  his  friends  thought  seriously  of 
shutting  him  up  in  an  asylum ;  he  tried  to  get  to  New 
York,  but  was  arrested  for  debt,  and  thrown  into 
prison.  Even  in  prison,  he  tried  to  interest  men 
with  capital  in  his  discovery,  for  he  needed  delicate 
and  expensive  apparatus,  and  at  last  two  brothers, 
William  and  Emory  Rider  agreed  to  advance  him  a 
certain  sum.  The  laboratory  was  built,  and  in  1844, 
Goodyear  astonished  the  world  by  producing  perfect 

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vulcanized  India-rubber  with  economy  and  certainty, 
».  The  long  and  desperate  battle  had  been  won ! 

Did  he  reap  a  fortune  ?  By  no  means !  In  one 
way  or  another,  he  was  defrauded  of  his  patent 
rights.  In  England,  for  instance,  another  man  who 
received  a  copy  of  the  American  patent,  actually  ap 
plied  for  and  obtained  the  English  rights  in  his  own 
name.  In  1858,  the  United  States  Commissioner  of 
Patents  said,  "  ]STo  inventor,  probably,  has  ever  been 
so  harassed,  so  trampled  upon,  so  plundered  by  that 
sordid  and  licentious  class  of  inf ringers  known  in  the 
parlance  of  the  world  as  '  pirates.7 '  Worn  out  with 
work  and  disappointment,  Goodyear  died  two  years 
later,  a  bankrupt.  But  his  story  should  be  remem 
bered,  and  his  memory  honored,  by  every  American. 

!N"ear  a  little  mountain  hamlet  of  central  Sweden 
stands  a  great  pyramid  of  iron  cast  from  ore  dug 
from  the  neighboring  mountains.  It  is  set  up  on  a 
base  of  granite  also  quarried  from  those  mountains, 
and  bears  upon  it  two  names,  Nils  Ericsson  and  John 
Ericsson.  The  monument  marks  the  place  where 
these  two  men  were  born.  The  life  of  the  former  was 
passed  in  Sweden  and  does  not  concern  us,  but  John 
Ericsson's  name  is  closely  connected  with  the  history 
of  the  United  States. 

He  was  the  son  of  a  poor  miner,  and  one  of  his 
earliest  recollections  was  of  the  sheriff  coming  to 
take  away  all  their  household  goods  in  payment  of  a 
debt.  He  was  put  to  work  in  the  iron  mines  as  soon 
as  he  was  able  to  earn  a  few  pennies  daily,  and  he 

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goon  developed  a  remarkable  aptitude  for  mechanics. 
At  the  age  of  eleven,  he  planned  a  pumping  engine 
to  keep  the  mines  free  from  water,  and  at  the  age  of 
twelve,  was  made  a  member  of  the  surveying  party 
in  charge  of  the  construction  of  the  Gotha  ship  canal, 
•and  was  soon  himself  in  charge  of  a  section  of  the 
work,  with  six  hundred  men  under  him,  one  of  whom 
was  detailed  to  follow  him  with  a  stool,  upon  which 
he  stood  to  use  the  surveying  instruments.  It  re 
minds  one  of  Farragut  commanding  a  war  ship,  at 
the  age  of  eleven. 

In  1826,  at  the  age  of  twenty-three,  he  went  to 
England  to  introduce  a  flame  or  gas-engine  which 
he  had  invented.  He  remained  there  for  eleven 
years,  and  then  a  fortunate  chance  won  him  for  the 
United  States.  He  had  been  experimenting  with  a 
screw  or  propeller  for  steamboats,  instead  of  the 
paddle-wheels  as  used  by  Fulton,  and  finally,  equip 
ping  a  small  boat  with  two  propellers,  offered  the  in 
vention  to  the  British  admiralty.  But  the  admiralty 
was  skeptical.  The  United  States  consul  in  Liver 
pool  happened  to  be  Francis  B.  Ogden,  a  pioneer  in 
steam  navigation  on  the  Ohio  river.  He  was  im 
pressed  with  Ericsson's  invention,  introduced  him  to 
Robert  F.  Stockton,  of  the  United  States  navy,  and 
on  their  assurance  that  the  invention  would  be  taken 
up  in  the  United  States,  closed  up  his  affairs  in  Eng 
land  and  sailed  for  this  country. 

His  first  experiment  was  disastrous — though 
through  no  fault  of  his.  A  ship-of-war  called  the 
Princeton  was  ordered  by  the  government  and  com- 

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pleted.  She  embodied,  besides  screw  propellers, 
many  other  features  which  made  her  a  nine  days' 
wonder.  A  distinguished  company  boarded  her  for 
her  trial  trip,  and  it  was  decided  also  to  test  her  big 
guns.  But  at  the  first  discharge,  the  gun  burst, 
killing  the  secretary  of  state,  the  secretary  of  the 
navy,  the  captain  of  the  ship,  and  a  number  of  other 
well  known  men.  As  a  consequence,  the  experiment 
was  stopped  and  Ericsson  was  twelve  years  in  secur 
ing  from  the  government  the  $15,000  he  had  spent 
in  equipping  the  Princeton. 

However,  he  was  soon  to  render  the  country  a 
service  which  will  never  be  forgotten.  In  1861,  he 
appeared  before  the  navy  department  with  a  plan 
for  an  iron-clad  consisting  of  a  revolving  turret 
mounted  upon  an  armored  raft.  He  secured  an  order 
for  one  such  vessel,  to  be  paid  for  only  in  the  event 
that  it  proved  successful.  The  majority  of  the  board 
which  gave  the  order  doubtless  laughed  in  their 
sleeves  as  the  inventor  withdrew,  for  what  chance  of 
success  had  such  a  vessel?  There  were  some  who 
even  doubted  whether  she  would  float — among  them 
her  builders,  who  took  the  precaution  of  placing 
buoys  under  her  before  they  launched  her  four 
months  later. 

Of  the  voyage  of  the  little  craft  from  !N"ew  York 
to  Hampton  Koads,  and  of  her  epoch-making  battle 
with  the  Merrimac  we  have  already  told.  Ericsson 
had  asked  that  she  be  named  the  "  Monitor,"  as  a 
warning  to  the  nations  of  the  world  that  a  new  era 
in  naval  warfare  had  begun,  and  that  she  was  well- 

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Inventors 

named  no  one  could  doubt  after  that  momentous 
ninth  of  March,  1862.  Honors  were  showered  upon 
the  inventor,  whose  great  service  to  the  nation  could 
not  be  questioned.  The  following  ten  years  of  his 
life  were  devoted  to  the  construction  of  his  famous 
torpedo-boat,  the  "  Destroyer,"  which,  he  believed, 
would  annihilate  any  vessel  afloat — the  predecessor 
of  all  the  torpedo-boats,  past  and  present,  which 
have  played  so  imporant  a  part  in  naval  warfare. 
He  lived  for  more  than  twenty  years  in  a  house  in 
Beach  street,  New  York,  where  he  died,  in  1889. 

The  Monitor's  attack  upon  the  Merrimac  would 
have  been  ineffective  but  for  the  remarkable  guns 
with  which  the  little  craft  was  armed — two  eleven- 
inch  rifled  cannon,  the  invention  of  John  Adolph 
Dahlgren.  Dahlgren  had  been  connected  with  the 
ordnance  department  of  the  navy  at  Washington 
for  many  years,  and  his  inventions  had  revolution 
ized  United  States  gunnery. 

Dahlgren  was  born  at  Philadelphia,  where  his 
father  was  Swedish  consul,  a  position  which  he  held 
until  his  death  in  1824.  The  boy,  from  his  earliest 
years,  had  been  ambitious  to  enter  the  navy,  and 
finally,  at  the  age  of  seventeen,  received  his  mid 
shipman's  warrant.  In  1847,  he  was  assigned  to 
ordnance  duty  at  Washington,  and  began  that  ca 
reer  of  extraordinary  energy,  which  lasted  for  six 
teen  years.  He  saw  almost  at  once  the  many  defects 
in  the  cannon  which  were  at  that  time  being  manu 
factured,  and  soon  offered  a  design  of  his  own,  which 
proved  a  vast  advance  over  old  guns.  The  Dahlgren 

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gun,  as  it  was  called,  was  of  iron,  cast  solid,  with  a 
thick  breech  adjusted  to  meet  varying  pressure 
strains.  The  invention  of  the  rifled  cannon  fol 
lowed,  and  it  was  this  weapon  which  caused  even  the 
great  armored  Merrimac  to  tremble.  Admiral  Dahl- 
gren's  career  was  a  distinguished  one,  but  no  service 
he  rendered  his  country  was  more  noteworthy  than 
this. 

But  there  are  triumphs  of  peace,  as  well  as  of 
war,  and  one  of  the  most  notable  of  these  was  won 
by  Cyrus  Hall  McCormick  when  he  invented  the 
automatic  reaper  which  bears  his  name.  In  1859,  it 
was  estimated  that  the  reaper  was  worth  $55,000,000 
a  year  to  the  United  States ;  William  H.  Seward  re 
marked  that,  "  owing  to  Mr.  McCormick's  invention, 
the  line  of  civilization  moves  westward  thirty  miles 
each  year  " ;  and  the  London  Times  declared,  after  it 
had  been  tested  at  the  great  international  exhibition. 
of  1851,  that  it  was  "  worth  to  the  farmers  of  Eng 
land  the  whole  cost  of  that  exhibition.77  To  few  men 
is  it  given  to  confer  such  benefits  upon  mankind,  and 
the  career  of  this  one  is  well  worth  dwelling  upon. 

Cyrus  McCormick  was  born  in  1809,  in  a  little 
house  at  the  hamlet  of  Walnut  Grove,  Virginia.  His 
father  was  a  farmer,  and  was  also  something  of  a 
mechanical  genius,  and  as  early  as  1816,  had  tried 
to  build  a  mechanical  reaper.  His  son  inherited  this 
aptitude,  and  helped  his  father  in  mechanical  ex 
periments,  soon  quite  outstripping  him.  As  a  farm 
er's  boy,  his  day's  work  in  the  fields  began  at  five 
o'clock  in  the  morning,  and  in  the  harvesting  season 

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Inventors 

even  earlier.  But  in  the  harvest  field,  he  found  him 
self  unable  to  keep  up  with  grown  men  in  the  hard 
work  of  swinging  the  scythe,  and  so  devised  a  har 
vesting-cradle,  which  made  the  work  so  much  easier 
that  he  was  ahle  to  do  his  share.  At  the  age  of 
twenty-two  he  invented  a  plough,  which  threw  alter 
nate  furrows  on  either  side,  and  two  years  later,  a 
self-sharpening  plough,  which  proved  a  great  success. 

Then  he  turned  his  attention  to  a  mechanical 
reaper,  though  his  father  warned  him  against  wast 
ing  time  and  money  on  so  impracticable  a  project. 
But  the  possibility  of  making  a  machine  do  the  hot 
hand-work  of  the  harvest  field  fascinated  the  young 
man,  and  he  set  to  work  upon  the  problem.  It  was 
not  an  easy  one,  for  the  machine,  to  be  successful, 
must  not  only  work  in  fields  where  the  wheat  stood 
straight,  but  also  where  it  had  become  tangled  and 
beaten  down  by  wind  and  rain.  In  1831,  he  pro 
duced  his  first  practicable  machine,  making  every 
part  of  it  himself  by  hand.  Its  three  essential  feat 
ures  have  never  been  changed — a  vibrating  cutting- 
blade,  a  reel  to  bring  the  grain  within  reach  of  the 
blade,  and  a  platform  to  receive  the  falling  grain. 
,The  problem  had  been  solved. 

Three  years,  however,  were  spent  in  perfecting  the 
minor  working  parts,  then  another  was  built  and 
tested.  It  worked  well,  but  McCormick  was  still  not 
satisfied  with  it,  and  not  until  1840,  was  it  perfected 
sufficiently  to  make  him  willing  to  put  it  on  the 
market.  This  self-restraint  was  remarkable,  but  it 
had  this  good  effect,  that  when  the  machine  was 

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finally  offered  to  the  public,  it  was  not  an  experi 
ment.  So  there  were  no  failures,  but  a  steady  in 
crease  in  demand  from  the  very  first,  until  the  great 
factory,  which  McCormick  early  located  at  Chicago, 
now  turns  out  nearly  two  hundred  thousand  machines 
a  year.  The  whir  of  these  machines  is  heard  around 
the  world — everywhere  the  McCormick  reaper  is  do 
ing  its  share  toward  lightening  man's  labor. 

Another  of  the  great  victories  of  peace  was  won  by 
Elias  Howe,  when,  in  1844,  he  invented  a  machine 
which  would  sew.  Strangely  enough,  he  was  at  first 
regarded  as  an  enemy  of  humanity,  rather  than  as  a 
friend;  an  enemy,  especially,  of  the  poor  sewing- 
women  who  earned  a  pitiful  living  with  the  needle. 
Few  had  the  foresight  to  perceive  that  it  was  these 
very  women  whose  toil  he  was  doing  most  to 
lighten ! 

Elias  Howe,  born  in  Spencer,  Massachusetts,  in 
1819,  as  the  son  of  a  poor  miller,  and  was  put  to 
work  at  the  age  of  six  to  contribute  his  mite  to  the 
support  of  the  family.  He  was  a  frail  child  and 
slightly  lame,  so  that,  after  trying  in  vain  to  do  farm 
labor,  he  went  to  work  in  the  mill,  and  afterwards  in 
a  machine  shop,  where  he  learned  to  be  a  first-class 
machinist — knowledge  which,  at  a  later  day,  was  to 
stand  him  in  good  stead.  He  married,  at  the  age  of 
twenty-one,  and  three  children  were  born  to  him. 
Then  came  a  period  of  illness,  during  which  the 
young  mother  supported  the  family  by  sewing;  and 
as  Howe  lay  upon  his  bed,  watching  his  wife  at  this 
tedious  labor,  the  thought  came  to  him  what  a  blesa- 

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Inventors 

ing  it  would  be  to  mankind  if  a  machine  could  be 
devised  to  do  that  work. 

The  idea  remained  with  him,  and  finally  led  to  ex 
periments.  Of  the  many  disappointments,  the  long 
months  of  patient  labor,  the  intense  thought,  the  re 
peated  failures,  there  is  not  room  to  tell  here;  but 
at  last  he  hit  upon  the  solution  of  the  problem — the 
use  of  two  threads,  making  the  stitch  by  means  of 
a  shuttle  and  a  needle  with  the  eye  near  the 
point.  In  October,  1844,  he  produced  a  rude  ma 
chine  which  would  actually  sew.  Another  year  was 
spent  in  perfecting  it,  while  he  kept  his  family  from 
starvation  by  doing  such  odd  jobs  as  he  could  find, 
and  in  the  winter  of  1845,  he  was  ready  to  introduce 
his  machine  to  the  public. 

But  here  an  unforeseen  difficulty  arose.  The  pub 
lic  refused  to  have  anything  to  do  with  the  machine. 
The  tailors  declared  it  would  ruin  their  trade,  and 
refused  to  try  it ;  nobody  could  be  found  who  would 
invest  a  dollar  in  it;  and  Howe,  in  despair,  was 
forced  to  put  his  invention  away  and  to  accept  a 
place  as  railway  engineer  in  order  to  support  his 
family.  Some  disastrous  years  followed,  his  wife 
died,  and  he  was  left  in  absolute  poverty,  but  at  last 
came  a  ray  of  light.  A  man  named  Bliss  became  in 
terested  in  Howe's  invention,  and  a  few  machines 
were  made  and  marketed  in  2sTew  York.  Riots 
among  the  workingmen  followed,  so  serious  that  for 
a  time  the  use  of  the  machines  was  stopped;  but  no 
human  power  could  stay  the  wheel  of  progress,  and 
as  the  value  of  the  invention  came  to  be  recognized, 

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all  opposition  to  it  faded  away.  Howe's  royalties 
grew  to  enormous  proportions,  but  he  had  been 
broken  in  health  by  his  years  of  struggle  and  hard 
ship,  and  lived  only  a  few  years  to  enjoy  them. 

George  Henry  Corliss  was  another  mechanical  gen 
ius,  who,  in  one  respect,  anticipated  Howe,  for  about 
1842  he  actually  invented  a  machine  for  stitching 
leather.  That  was  two  years  before  Howe  made  his 
discovery.  But  Corliss  was  soon  attracted  to  other 
work,  and  the  development  of  the  sewing  machine 
was  left  for  the  other  inventor.  It  was  in  1846  that 
Corliss  began  to  develop  those  improvements  in  the 
steam  engine  which  were  to  revolutionize  its  con 
struction.  One  trouble  with  the  steam  engine  as 
then  built  was  that  it  was  not  uniform  in  motion. 
That  is,  if  the  engine  was  running  a  lot  of  machines, 
their  speed  would  vary  from  moment  to  moment,  as 
they  were  started  or  stopped.  For  instance,  a  hundred 
looms,  all  running  at  once,  would  run  at  a  certain 
speed,  but  if  some  of  them  were  shut  off,  the  speed 
of  the  others  would  increase,  so  that  it  was  very 
difficult  to  regulate  them.  Again,  there  was  a  tre 
mendous  waste  of  power,  so  that  the  fuel  consump 
tion  was  out  of  all  proportion  to  the  power  actually 
developed. 

It  was  these  defects  that  Corliss  set  himself  to  rem 
edy,  and  he  did  it  simply  by  taking  a  load  off  the 
governor,  which  had  always  been  used  to  move  the 
throttle-valve.  In  the  Corliss  engine,  the  governor 
simply  indicated  to  the  valves  the  work  to  be  done, 
and  the  saving  of  fuel  was  so  great  that  the  in- 

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Inventors 

ventor  often  installed  his  engine  under  a  contract  to 
take  the  saving  in  coal-bills  from  a  certain  period 
as  his  pay.  One  of  his  great  achievements  was  the 
construction  of  a  1400  horse  power  engine  to  move 
all  the  machinery  at  the  centennial  exposition  at 
Philadelphia,  in  1876.  The  engine,  which  worked 
splendidly,  was  one  of  the  sights  of  the  exposition. 

What  the  sewing-machine  is  to  the  needle,  the 
typewriter  is  to  the  pen.  ^o  other  one  invention 
has  so  revolutionized  business,  and  the  credit  for  the 
invention  of  a  practicable  typewriting  machine  is  due 
to  C.  Latham  Sholes.  Others  had  tried  their  hands 
at  the  problem  before  he  took  it  up,  but  he  was  the 
first  to  hit  upon  its  solution — a  number  of  type-bars 
carrying  the  letters  of  the  alphabet  operated  by  lev 
ers  and  striking  upon  a  common  centre,  past  which 
the  paper  was  carried  on  a  revolving  cylinder. 

Sholes  had  a  varied  and  picturesque  career.  Born 
in  Pennsylvania  in  1819,  he  followed  the  printer's 
trade  for  a  number  of  years,  and  it  was  no  doubt 
from  the  type  that  he  got  his  idea  of  engraved  dies 
mounted  on  type-bars.  Finally  he  removed  to  Wis 
consin,  where  he  edited  a  paper  and  soon  became 
prominent  in  the  politics  of  the  state,  holding  a  num 
ber  of  appointive  positions.  It  was  in  1866  that  he 
began  to  experiment  with  a  writing-machine,  and  his  ». 
first  one,  "which  was  patented  two  years  later,  was  as 
big  as  a  sewing-machine.  Still,  it  embodied  the  es 
sential  principles  of  the  typewriter  as  it  is  made  to 
day,  and  after  spending  five  years  in  perfecting  it, 
Sholes  made  a  contract  with  E.  Remington  &  Son  to 

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manufacture  it.  It  is  one  of  the  ironies  of  fate  that 
the  name  principally  connected  with  the  typewriter 
in  the  public  mind  is  that  of  the  manufacturer,  the 
identity  of  the  inventor  being  completely  lost,  so 
far  as  applied,  at  least,  to  the  name  of  any  machine. 

"We  have  spoken  elsewhere  of  the  career  of  John 
D.  Rockefeller,  of  the  immense  fortune  he  made 
from  petroleum  and  the  manner  in  which  he  disposed 
of  a  portion  of  it.  It  is  worth  pausing  a  moment  to 
consider  the  career  of  the  two  men  who  discovered 
petroleum,  who  sunk  the  first  well  in  search  of  a 
larger  supply,  and  who  put  it  on  the  market.  There 
is  scarcely  any  development  of  modern  life  to  rank 
in  importance  with  the  introduction  of  kerosene.  It 
added  at  once  several  hours  to  every  day,  and 
who  can  estimate  what  these  evening  hours,  spent 
usually  in  study  or  reading,  have  meant  to  human 
ity? 

In  the  early  part  of  the  century,  whales  were  so 
plentiful,  especially  along  the  New  England  coast, 
that  whale,  or  sperm,  oil  was  used  for  lighting  pur 
poses,  and  many  of  the  old  whale-oil  lamps  are  still 
in  existence.  The  light  they  gave  was  dim  and 
smoky,  but  it  was  far  better  than  no  light  at  all. 
As  the  years  passed,  whales  became  more  and  more 
scarce,  until  sperm  oil  was  selling  at  over  two  dollars 
a  gallon.  Only  the  richest  people  could  afford  to  pay 
that,  and  the  poor  passed  their  evenings  in  darkness. 

In  1854,  a  man  named  James  II.  Townsend 
brought  to  Professor  Silliman,  of  Yale,  a  bottle  of 

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Inventors 

oil,  asking  him  to  test  it.  This  was  done,  and  the 
astonished  professor  found  that  here  was  an  oil, 
whose  source  he  could  only  guess,  which  made  a 
splendid  illuminant  and  which  also  seemed  to  have 
some  medicinal  properties.  The  oil  was  from  Oil 
Creek,  Pennsylvania,  and  Townsend,  associating 
with  himself  a  conductor  named  E.  L.  Drake,  formed 
the  Seneca  Oil  Company  and  began  gathering  the  oil 
by  digging  trenches.  At  first  it  was  bottled  and  sold 
for  medicinal  purposes  at  one  dollar  a  gallon;  then 
Drake  suggested  that  a  larger  supply  might  be  secured 
if  a  well  was  bored  for  it.  A  man  familiar  with  salt 
well  boring  was  employed,  and  in  1859  the  first  well 
was  begun  at.  Titusville. 

Most  people  regarded  Drake  as  a  madman,  and 
thought  that  he  was  simply  throwing  money  away. 
The  work  was  costly  and  slow,  and  finally,  when 
$50,000  had  been  spent  without  result,  the  stock 
holders  of  the  company  refused  to  go  further — all 
except  Townsend.  That  enthusiast  managed  to  rake 
up  another  $500,  which  he  sent  to  Drake,  with  in 
structions  to  make  it  go  as  far  as  possible.  It  did 
not  go  very  far — and  yet  far  enough — for  one  day 
the  auger,  which  was  down  sixty-eight  feet,  struck 
a  cavity,  and  up  came  a  flow  of  oil  to  within  five 
feet  of  the  surface.  Pumping  began  at  the  rate  of 
five  hundred  barrels  a  day,  and  fortune  seemed  in 
sight.  But  three  months  later,  the  company's  works 
were  destroyed  by  fire,  and  before  they  could  be  re 
built,  scores  of  other  wells  had  been  sunk,  many  of 
which  were  "  gushers/7  requiring  no  pumping,  and 

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the  supply  was  soon  so  far  in  excess  of  the  demand 
that  the  price  of  oil  tumbled  to  one  dollar  a  barrel. 
Discouraged  by  all  this,  the  Seneca  Company  sold 
out  its  leases  and  disbanded,  leaving  Townsend  and 
Drake  poorer  than  they  had  been  before  their  great 
discovery. 

Years  ago,  in  1790,  to  be  exact,  an  Italian  scien^ 
tist  named  Galvani,  experimenting  with  the  legs  of  a 
frog,  happened  to  touch  the  exposed  nerves  with  a 
piece  of  metal,  while  the  legs  were  lying  across  an 
other  piece.  He  was  astonished  to  see  the  legs  con 
tract  violently.  Further  experiments  followed,  and 
the  galvanic  battery  resulted.  Years  later,  our  own 
Professor  Henry  discovered  that  if  an  insulated  wire 
carrying  a  current  of  electricity  was  wrapped  around 
a  piece  of  soft  iron,  the  latter  became  a  magnet.  Out 
of  these  simple  discoveries,  came  the  electric  tele 
graph,  and,  still  more  wonderful,  the  telephone,  by 
which  the  human  voice  may  be  instantly  projected 
hundreds  of  miles,  not  only  intelligibly,  but  with 
every  tone  and  inflection  reproduced.  In  an  age  of 
wonders,  this  is  surely  one  of  the  greatest. 

On  February  14,  1876,  two  applications  were 
made  at  the  patent  office  at  Washington  for  patents 
upon  the  conveyance  of  sound  by  electricity.  One 
was  filed  by  Elisha  Gray,  the  other  by  Alexander 
•Graham  Bell.  They  were  practically  identical,  but  it 
was  Bell's  good  fortune  to  be  the  first  to  make  his 
device  practically  effective,  and  so  he  may  fairly  be 
considered  the  inventor  of  the  telephone. 

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Alexander  Graham  Bell  was  born  in  Edinburgh, 
Scotland,  in  1847,  the  son  of  the  famous  Alexander 
Melville  Bell,  the  inventor  of  the  system  by  which 
deaf  people  are  enabled  to  read  speech  more  or  less 
correctly  by  observing  the  motion  of  the  lips.  The 
family  moved  to  Canada  in  1872,  and  Alexander 
Bell  came  to  Boston,  where  he  soon  became  widely 
known  as  an  authority  in  the  teaching  of  the  deaf 
and  dumb.  The  reproduction  of  the  human  voice  by 
mechanical  means  interested  him  deeply,  and  his 
study  of  the  construction  of  the  human  ear,  with  its 
drum  vibrating  in  response  to  sound  vibrations,  gave 
him  the  idea  of  a  vibrating  piece  of  iron  in  front  of 
an  electric  magnet.  He  was,  however,  very  poor  and 
had  no  money  to  expend  in  experiments — so  poorr 
indeed,  that  when  attacked  by  illness,  his  hospital 
expenses  were  paid  by  his  employer,  and  so  friend 
less  that  during  his  illness  no  one  visited  him  except 
two  or  three  pupils  from  his  school. 

He  persevered  with  his  experiments,  with  such! 
rude  apparatus  as  he  could  make  himself,  and  the- 
first  Bell  telephone  was  brought  into  existence  with 
an  old  cigar-box,  two  hundred  feet  of  wire,  and  two- 
magnets  from  a  toy  fish-pond.  In  an  improved  form, 
it  was  shown  at  the  Centennial  exhibition  of  1876, 
where  Sir  William  Thomson  pronounced  it  "  the 
greatest  marvel  hitherto  achieved  by  the  electric 
telegraph."  As  is  always  the  case,  the  public  was 
slow  to  appreciate  the  importance  of  the  invention, 
and  as  late  as  1877,  Bell  was  unable  to  secure  $10,000 
for  a  half  interest  in  the  European  rights.  The  rapid 

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growth  of  the  business  in  this  country  is  almost  with 
out  a  parallel  in  history,  and  no  invention  has  added 
more  to  the  convenience  of  modern  life. 

A  distinguished  scientist  one  day  asked  the  late 
Clerk  Maxwell  what  was  the  greatest  scientific  dis 
covery  of  the  last  half  century,  and  Maxwell  an 
swered  without  an  instant's  hesitation :  "  That  the 
Gramme  machine  is  reversible."  Probably  the  whole 
scientific  world  will  agree  with  him,  for  that  dis 
covery  meant  that  power  will  not  only  produce  elec 
tricity,  but  that  electricity  will  produce  power.  Let 
us  see  how  that  has  been  applied.  Falling  water  is 
one  of  the  most  powerful  agents  in  the  world,  and  at 
a  great  waterfall  like  Niagara,  millions  of  horse 
power  go  to  waste  every  day.  So  at  the  foot  of  Nia 
gara,  great  power-houses  have  been  built  where  the 
power  of  the  water  is  converted  into  electricity.  The 
electricity  is  conducted  along  wires  for  hundreds  of 
miles  to  the  great  industrial  centres,  and  there  con 
verted  back  again  into  power.  In  other  words,  the 
water  of  Niagara  is  to-day  turning  machinery  in 
Buffalo  and  Albany.  The  same  method  of  producing 
power,  the  cheapest  that  has  ever  been  discovered,  is 
being  installed  all  over  the  world,  and  will,  in  time, 
produce  a  revolution  in  manufacturing  processes. 

The  vital  mechanism  in  the  production  of  this 
power  is  the  dynamo,  and  it  is  to  Charles  F.  Brush, 
of  Cleveland,  Ohio,  that  its  development  is  princi 
pally  due.  He  was  interested  in  electricity  from  his 
earliest  years,  and  when  he  was  only  thirteen,  dis- 

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Inventors 

tinguished  himself  by  making  magnetic  machines 
and  batteries  for  the  Cleveland  high-school,  where 
he  was  a  pupil.  During  his  senior  year,  the  physical 
apparatus  of  the  school  laboratory  was  placed  under 
his  charge,  and  he  constructed  an  electric  motor  hav 
ing  its  field  magnets  as  well  as  its  armature  excited 
by  the  electric  current.  He  devised  an  apparatus- 
for  turning  on  the  gas  in  the  street  lamps  of  Cleve 
land,  lighting  it  and  turning  it  off  again,  thus  doing 
away  with  the  expensive  process  of  lighting  them 
and  turning  them  out  by  hand. 

After  graduating  from  the  University  of  Michigan 
with  the  degree  of  mining  engineer,  he  returned  to 
Cleveland,  where,  in  1875,  his  attention  was  drawn 
to  the  great  need  of  a  more  effective  dynamo  than  the 
clumsy  and  inefficient  types  then  in  use.  In  two 
months,  Brush  had  made  a  dynamo  so  perfect  in 
every  way  that  it  was  running  until  taken  to  the 
Chicago  Exposition,  in  1893.  Six  months  more  of 
experimenting  resulted  in  the  Brush  arc  light,  and 
in  1879  the  Brush  Electric  Company  was  organized. 
A  year  later,  the  first  Brush  lights  were  installed  in 
New  York  City,  and  now  there  is  scarcely  a  town 
in  the  country  which  does  not  pay  tribute  to  the 
inventor. 

Let  us  turn  for  a  moment  from  the  field  of  elec 
tricity,  in  which  America  has  been  pre-eminent,  to 
another  in  which  Yankee  ingenuity  has  also  led  the 
world — the  railroad.  It  was  in  this  country  that  the 
sleeping-car,  the  diner,  the  parlor-car  were  first  used  ^ 

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no  other  country  affords  such  luxury  of  travel;  and 
no  other  country  has  added  to  railroading  any  device 
comparable  in  importance  to  the  invention  of  George 
Westinghouse,  the  air-brake.  Before  its  introduction, 
to  stop  a  train  brakes  must  be  set  painfully  by  hand, 
and  even  then  were  not  always  effective.  ]STow,  the 
engineer,  by  pulling  a  single  lever,  sets  the  brakes  in 
stantly  all  along  his  train,  and  so  effectively  that  the 
passengers  sometimes  feel  as  though  the  train  had 
struck  a  rock.  More  than  that,  should  any  accident 
occur,  breaking  the  train  in  two,  the  brakes  are  in 
stantly  set  automatically.  All  of  which  is  done  by 
the  power  of  compresed  air,  working  through  a  series 
of  pipes  and  air-hose  beneath  the  cars. 

George  Westinghouse's  father  was  superintendent 
of  the  Schenectady  Agricultural  Works,  and  it  wras 
there  that  the  boy  found  his  vocation.  Before  he 
was  fifteen,  he  had  modelled  and  built  a  steam  en 
gine,  and  followed  that  with  -a  steel  railroad  frog, 
which  was  so  great  an  improvement  over  the  frogs 
then  in  use  that  it  was  soon  widely  adopted,  and 
brought  the  young  inventor  both  money  and  reputa 
tion.  He  moved  to  Pittsburgh,  as  the  centre  of  the 
iron  and  steel  business,  and  began  the  manufacture 
of  his  frogs  there. 

One  day  he  came  across  a  newspaper  account  of 
the  successful  use  of  compressed  air  in  the  digging 
of  the  Mont  Cenis  tunnel,  in  Switzerland,  and  the 
thought  occurred  to  him  that  perhaps  a  railroad 
train  could  be  controlled  by  the  same  agency.  He 
worked  over  the  problem  for  a  time,  but  when  he 

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Inventors 

mentioned  his  idea  to  his  friends,  they  were  in 
clined  to  think  it  absurd  to  suppose  that  a  rubber- 
tube  strung  along  under  the  ears  could  work  the 
brakes  effectively.  However,  Westinghouse  was  not 
discouraged,  but  continued  to  experiment,  and  the 
air-brake  as  we  have  it  to-day  was  the  result. 

Which  brings  us  to  the  most  remarkable  genius  in 
the  field  of  invention  the  world  has  ever  known 
— the  man  who  has  made  invention,  as  it  were,  a 
business,  whose  life  has  been  devoted  to  rendering 
practical  and  useful  the  dreams  of  other  men,  who 
has  reduced  invention  to  a  science — Thomas  Alva 
Edison.  There  are  some  who  are  inclined  to  belittle 
Edison's  achievements  because  some  of  the  greatest 
of  them  have  been  founded  upon  the  ideas  of  others. 
He  is  best  known,  for  instance,  as  the  inventor  of  the 
modern  incandescent  light;  but  the  discovery  that 
light  may  be  obtained  from  wire  heated  to  incandes 
cence  in  a  glass  bulb  from  which  the  air  has  been 
exhausted,  was  made  when  Edison  was  only  two 
years  old.  Experiments  with  this  light  were  made 
by  a  dozen  scientists,  but  it  remained  a  mere  labora 
tory  curiosity  until  Edison  took  hold  of  it,  and  with 
a  patience,  ingenuity  and  fertility  of  resource,  in 
which  he  stands  alone,  made  it  a  practicable,  effi 
cient  and  convenient  source  of  light.  That  the  in 
candescent  light,  as  it  is  known  to-day,  is  his  through 
and  through  cannot  be  questioned. 

It  is  as  a  scientific  inventor  that  Edison  likes  to 
be  known.  He  abhors  the  word  discoverer,  as  ap- 

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plied  to  himself.  "  Discovery  is  not  invention,"  he 
once  said.  "  A  discovery  is  more  or  less  in  the 
nature  of  an  accident,  while  an  invention  is  purely 
deductive.  In  my  own  case,  but  few,  and  those  the 
least  important,  of  my  inventions,  owed  anything  to 
accident.  Most  of  them  have  been  hammered  out 
after  long  and  patient  labor,  and  are  the  result  of 
countless  experiments  all  directed  toward  attaining 
some  well-defined  object." 

There  is,  however,  one  modern  marvel  for  which 
Edison  is  wholly  responsible,  both  for  the  initial  idea 
and  for  its  practical  working-out — the  phonograph — 
but  let  us  tell  something  of  his  early  life,  before  we 
relate  the  achievements  of  his  manhood. 

Born  in  a  little  village  in  Erie  County,  Ohio,  in 
1847,  Edison  was  early  introduced  to  the  struggle 
for  existence.  His  father  was  very  poor,  being,  in 
deed,  the  village  jack-of -all-trades,  and  living  upon 
such  odd  jobs  as  he  was  able  to  procure.  The  boy,  of 
course,  was  put  to  work  as  soon  as  he  was  old  enough, 
and  of  regular  schooling  had  only  two  months 
in  all  his  life.  At  the  age  of  twelve,  he  was  a  train- 
boy  on  the  Michigan  Central  Railroad,  selling  books, 
papers,  candy,  and  fruit  to  the  passengers.  He 
managed  to  get  some  type  and  an  old  press  and 
issued  a  little  paper  called  the  "  Grand  Trunk 
Herald,"  containing  the  news  of  the  railroad.  One 
day,  he  snatched  the  little  child  of  the  station-master 
at  Port  Clements,  Michigan,  from  under  the  wheels 
of  a  train,  and  in  return  the  grateful  father  taught 
the  boy  telegraphy. 

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Inventors 

It  was  the  turning-point  in  his  career,  for  it 
turned  his  attention  to  the  study  of  electricity,  with 
which  he  was  soon  fascinated.  At  eighteen,  he  was 
working  as  an  operator  at  Indianapolis,  but  he  was 
from  the  very  first,  more  of  an  inventor  than  an 
operator,  and  his  inventions  sometimes  got  him  into 
trouble.  For  instance,  at  one  place  where  he  had 
a  night  trick,  he  was  required  to  report  the  word 
"  six  "  every  half -hour  to  the  manager  to  show  that 
he  was  awake  and  on  duty.  After  a  while,  he  rigged 
up  a  wheel  to  do  it  for  him,  and  all  went  well  until 
the  manager  happened  to  visit  the  office  one  night 
and  found  Edison  sleeping  calmly  while  his  wheel 
was  sending  in  the  word  "  six."  But  he  nevertheless 
developed  into  one  of  the  swiftest  operators  in  the 
country,  all  the  time  devising  changes  and  improve 
ments  in  the  mechanism  of  telegraphy. 

His  first  great  success  came  writh  the  sale  of  an 
improvement  in  the  instruments  used  to  record  stock 
quotations,  which  enabled  these  "  tickers  "  to  print 
the  quotations  legibly  on  paper  tape,  and  this  success 
enabled  him  to  get  some  capitalists  to  finance  his 
experiments  with  the  electric  light.  The  arrrange- 
ment  was  that  they  were  to  pay  the  expense  of  the 
experiments  and  to  share  in  such  inventions  as  re 
sulted.  For  the  sake  of  quiet,  he  moved  out  to  a 
little  place  in  New  Jersey  called  Menlo  Park,  and 
built  himself  a  shop.  Then  began  that  remarkable 
series  of  experiments — one  of  the  most  remarkable  in 
history — which  resulted  in  the  perfection  of  the  in 
candescent  lamp. 

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The  problem  was  to  find  a  material  for  the  fila 
ment  which  would  give  a  bright  light  and  which 
would,  at  the  same  time,  be  durable,  and  with  this 
end  in  view,  hundreds  and  hundreds  of  different  fila 
ments  were  tried.  The  difficulties  in  the  way  of 
this  experimenting  were  enormous,  since  the  light 
only  burns  when  in  a  vacuum,  and  the  instant  the 
vacuum  is  impaired,  out  it  goes.  At  one  time,  all 
the  lamps  he  had  burning  at  Menlo  Park,  about 
eighty  in  all,  went  out,  one  after  another,  without 
apparent  cause.  The  lamps  had  been  equipped  with 
filaments  of  carbon  and  had  burned  for  a  month. 
There  seemed  to  be  no  reason  why  they  should  not 
burn  for  a  year,  and  Edison  was  stunned  by  the 
catastrophe.  He  began  at  once  the  most  exhaustive 
series  of  experiments  ever  undertaken  by  an  Ameri 
can  physicist,  remaining  in  his  laboratory  for  five 
days  and  nights,  dining  at  his  work  bench  on  bread 
and  cheese,  and  snatching  a  little  sleep  occasionally, 
when  one  of  his  assistants  was  on  duty.  It  was 
finally  discovered  that  the  air  had  not  been  suffi 
ciently  exhausted  from  the  lamps. 

Again  success  seemed  in  sight,  but  soon  the  lamps 
began  acting  queerly  again.  Worn  out  with  fatigue 
and  disappointment,  Edison  took  to  his  bed.  Ulti 
mate  failure  was  freely  predicted,  and  the  price  of 
gas  stock  rose  again.  In  five  months,  the  inventor 
had  aged  five  years,  but  he  was  not  yet  ready  to  give 
up  the  fight.  And  at  last  it  was  won,  and  the  incan 
descent  lamp  placed  on  the  market.  It  has  not  dis 
placed  gas,  as  some  people  thought  it  would,  but  it  is 

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Inventors 

the  basis  of  a  business  which  made  the  inventor  suffi 
ciently  rich  to  realize  his  great  ambition  of  building 
himself  the  finest  laboratory  in  the  world;  where 
the  most  expert  iron-workers,  wood-workers,  glass- 
blowers,  metal-spinners,  machinists  and  chemists  in 
the  world  find  employment.  Every  known  metal, 
every  chemical,  every  kind  of  glass,  stone,  earth, 
wood,  fibre,  paper,  skin,  cloth,  may  be  found  in  its 
store-rooms,  ready  for  instant  use.  The  library  con 
tains  one  of  the  finest  collections  of  scientific  books 
and  periodicals  to  be  found  anywhere.  These  are  the 
tools,  and  with  them  Edison  is  constantly  at  work 
upon  a  great  variety  of  problems. 

The  first  thing  he  turned  his  hand  to  after  his 
installation  in  his  new  laboratory  was  the  phono 
graph.  The  patient  thought  and  experiment,  extend 
ing  over  many  years,  lavished  on  this  wonderful  in 
vention  are  almost  unbelievable.  The  idea  had  come 
to  him  years  before,  when  he  had  worked  out  an 
instrument  that  would  not  only  record  telegrams  by 
indenting  a  strip  of  paper  with  the  dots  and  dashes 
of  the  Morse  code,  but  would  also  repeat  the  message 
any  number  of  times  by  running  the  indented  strip 
of  paper  through  it. 

"  Naturally  enough,"  said  Edison,  in  telling  the 
story,  "  the  idea  occurred  to  me  that  if  the  indenta 
tions  on  paper  could  be  made  to  give  off  again  the 
•click  of  the  instrument,  why  could  not  the  vibra 
tions  of  a  diaphragm  be  recorded  and  similarly  re 
produced  ?  I  rigged  up  an  instrument  hastily  and 
pulled  a  strip  of  paper  through  it,  at  the  same  time 

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shouting  '  Hallo ! '  Then  the  paper  was  pulled 
through  again,  and  listening  breathlessly,  I  heard  a 
distinct  sound,  which  a  strong  imagination  might 
have  translated  into  the  original  '  Hallo ! '  That  was 
enough  to  lead  me  to  a  further  experiment.  I  made 
a  drawing  of  a  model,  and  took  it  to  Mr.  Kruesi,  at 
that  time  engaged  011  piece-work  for  me.  I  told  him 
it  was  a  talking-machine.  He  grinned,  thinking  it 
a  joke;  but  he  set  to  work  and  soon  had  the  model 
ready.  I  arranged  some  tin-foil  on  it  and  spoke  into 
the  machine.  Kruesi  looked  on,  still  grinning.  But 
when  I  arranged  the  machine  for  transmission  and  we 
both  heard  a  distinct  sound  from  it,  he  nearly  fell 
down  in  his  fright.  I  must  admit  that  I  was  a  little 
scared  myself."  The  words  which  he  had  spoken 
into  the  machine  and  which  were  the  first  ever  to  be 
reproduced  mechanically,  was  the  old  Mother  Goose 
quatrain,  starting,  "  Mary  had  a  Little  Lamb." 

From  that  rude  beginning  came  the  phonograph, 
with  which  Edison  has  never  ceased  to  experiment. 
He  has  made  improvements  in  it  from  year  to  year, 
until  it  has  reached  its  present  high  state  of  efficiency 
— a  state,  however,  which  Edison  hopes  to  improve 
still  further.  In  addition  to  the  two  great  inven 
tions  of  the  phonograph  and  incandescent  lamp, 
which  we  have  dwelt  upon  here,  many  more  stand 
to  his  credit.  In  fact,  he  has  been  the  greatest  client 
the  patent  office  ever  had,  nearly  one  thousand  pat 
ents  having  been  issued  in  his  name.  At  the  age  of 
sixty-three,  he  shows  no  sign  of  falling  off  in  either 
mental  or  physical  energy,  and  no  doubt  more  than 

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one  invention  has  jet  to  come  from  Llewellyn  Park 
before  lie  quits  liis  great  laboratory  forever. 

No  one  can  ever  guess  at  the  future  of  electrical 
invention.  The  recent  marvelous  development  of  the 
wireless  telegraph,  by  which  the  impalpable  ether  is 
harnessed  to  man's  service,  is  an  indication  of  the 
wonders  which  may  be  expected  in  the  future.  It 
was  our  own  Joseph  Henry  who,  in  1842,  discovered 
the  electric  wave — the  "  induction "  upon  which 
wireless  telegraphy  depends.  He  discovered  that 
when  he  produced  an  electric  spark  an  inch  long  in  a 
room  at  the  top  of  his  house,  electrical  action  was  in 
stantly  set  up  in  another  wire  circuit  in  the  cellar. 
After  some  study,  he  saw  and  announced  that  the 
electric  spark  started  some  sort  of  action  in  the  ether, 
which  passed  through  floors  and  ceilings  and  all 
other  intervening  objects,  and  caused  induction  in 
the  wires  in  the  cellar.  But  wireless  telegraphy  was 
made  a  commercial  possibility  not  by  any  great  scien 
tist,  but  by  a  young  Italian  named  Marconi.  Al 
ready  experiments  with  wireless  telephony  are  going 
forward,  and  another  half  century  may  see  all  the 
labor  of  the  world  performed  by  this  wonderful  and 
mysterious  force  which  we  call  electricity. 

From  earliest  times,  man  has  longed  to  navigate 
the  air.  He  has  watched  with  envy  the  free  flight  of 
birds,  and  has  tried  to  imitate  it,  usually  with  disas 
trous  results.  The  balloon,  of  course,  enabled  him 
to  rise  in  the  air,  but  once  there,  he  was  at  the  mercy 
of  every  wind.  More  recently,  balloons  fitted  with 

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motors  and  steering  gear  have  been  devised,  which* 
are  to  some  extent  dirigible ;  but  the  real  problem  has 
been  to  fly  as  birds  do  without  any  such  artificial  aid 
as  balloons  provide. 

Experiments  to  solve  this  problem  were  begun 
several  years  ago  by  Professor  S.  P.  Langley,  of  the 
Smithsonian  Institution,  under  government  supervis 
ion,  and  pointed  the  way  to  other  investigators.  He 
proved,  theoretically,  that  air-flight  was  possible,  pro 
vided  sufficient  velocity  could  be  obtained.  He 
showed  that  a  heavier-than-air  machine  would  sus 
tain  itself  in  the  air  if  it  could  only  be  driven  fast 
enough.  You  have  all  skipped  flat  stones  across  the 
water.  Well,  that  is  exactly  the  principle  of  the  fly 
ing  machine.  As  long  as  the  stone  went  fast  enough, 
it  skipped  along  the  top  of  the  water,  which  sustained 
it  and  even  threw  it  up  into  the  air  again.  When  its 
speed  slackened,  it  sank.  So  the  boy  on  skates  can 
skim  safely  across  thin  ice  which  would  not  bear  his 
weight  for  an  instant  if  he  tried  to  stand  upon  it. 

So,  theoretically,  it  was  possible  to  fly,  but  to  re 
duce  theory  to  practice  was  a  very  different  thing. 
Professor  Langley  tried  for  years  and  failed.  He 
built  a  great  machine,  which  plunged  beneath  the 
waters  of  the  Potomac  a  minute  after  it  was 
launched.  All  over  the  world,  inventors  were  strug 
gling  with  the  problem,  but  nowhere  with  any  great 
degree  of  success.  It  remained  for  two  brothers,  in 
a  little  workshop  at  Dayton,  Ohio,  to  produce  the 
first  machine  which  would  really  fly. 

Orville  and  Wilbur  Wright  were  poor  boys,  the 
368 


Inventors 

sons  of  a  clergyman,  and  apparently  in  no  way  dis 
tinguished  from  ordinary  boys,  except  by  a  taste  for 
mechanics.  They  had  a  little  workshop,  and  one  day 
in  1905,  they  brought  out  a  strange  looking  machine 
from  it,  and  announced  that  it  was  a  flying-machine. 
The  people  of  Dayton  smiled  skeptically,  and  assem 
bled  to  witness  the  demonstration  with  the  thought 
that  there  would  probably  soon  be  need  for  an  ambu 
lance.  The  gasoline  motor  with  which  the  machine 
was  equipped,  was  started,  one  of  the  brothers 
climbed  aboard  and  grasped  the  levers,  the  other 
dropped  a  weight  which  started  the  machine  down  a 
long  incline.  For  a  moment,  it  slid  along,  then  its 
great  forward  planes  caught  the  air  current  and  it 
soared  gracefully  up  into  the  air. 

That  was  a  great  moment  in  human  history,  so 
great  that  the  crowd  looking  on  scarcely  realized  its 
import.  They  watched  the  machine  with  bated 
breath,  and  saw  it  steered  around  in  a  circle,  showing 
that  it  could  go  against  the  wind  as  well  as  with  it. 
For  thirty-eight  minutes  it  remained  in  the  air,  mak 
ing  a  circular  flight  of  over  twenty-four  miles.  Then 
it  was  gently  landed  and  the  exhibition  was  over. 
Great  crowds  flocked  to  Dayton,  after  that,  expecting 
to  see  farther  exhibitions,  but  they  were  disap 
pointed.  The  machine  had  been  taken  back  to  the 
shop,  and  the  young  inventors  announced  that  they 
were  making  some  changes  in  it.  "No  one  was  ad 
mitted  to  the  shop,  nor  were  any  other  flights  made. 

One  day  the  inventors  also  disappeared,  and 
months  later  it  was  discovered  that  they  had  built 

369 


A  Guide  to  Biography 

themselves  a  little  shop  on  a  deserted  stretch  of  the 
sandy  North  Carolina  coast,  and  that  they  were 
carrying  on  their  experiments  there,  secure  from 
observation.  Enterprising  reporters  tried  to  inter 
view  them  and  failed;  but,  ambushed  afar  off,  they 
one  day  saw  the  great  machine  soaring  proudly  in  a 
wide  circle  above  the  sands.  A  photographer  even 
got  a  distant  photograph  of  it.  There  could  be 
no  doubt  that  the  Wright  brothers  had  solved  the 
problem  of  flight. 

But  not  for  two  years  more  were  they  ready  for 
public  exhibitions.  Then,  in  1908,  they  appeared 
at  Fort  Myer,  Virginia,  ready  to  take  part  in  the 
contest  set  by  the  United  States  government.  No  one 
who  was  present  on  that  first  day  will  ever  forget  his 
sensations  as  the  great  winged  creature  rose  grace 
fully  from  the  ground  and  circled  about  in  the  air 
overhead.  Again  and  again  flights  were  made,  some 
times  with  an  extra  passenger;  great  speed  was  at 
tained  and  the  machine  was  under  perfect  control. 
But  an  unfortunate  accident  put  a  stop  to  the  trials, 
for  one  day  a  propellor-blade  broke  while  the  ma 
chine  was  in  mid-air,  and  it  struck  the  ground  be 
fore  it  could  be  righted.  The  passenger,  a  member 
•of  the  United  States  Signal  Corps,  was  instantly 
killed  and  Orville  Wright  was  seriously  injured. 

Meanwhile,  the  other  brother,  Wilbur,  had  gone 
to  Europe,  where,  first  in  France,  and  afterwards  in 
Italy  and  England,  he  created  a  tremendous  sensa 
tion  by  his  spectacular  flights.  They  were  uniformly 
successful.  Not  an  accident  marred  them.  The  gov- 

370 


Inventors 

ernments  of  Europe  were  quick  to  secure  the  right 
to  manufacture  the  aeroplane ;  kings  and  princes  vied 
with  each  other  in  honoring  the  young  inventor,  and 
when  he  returned  to  the  United  States,  city,  state, 
and  nation  combined  in  a  great  reception  to  him  and 
to  his  brother. 

As  these  lines  are  being  written,  in  August,  1909, 
another  series  of  flights  has  been  concluded  at  Fort 
Hyer.  They  were  successful  in  every  way  in  ful 
filling  the  government  tests,  and  the  Wrights'  ma 
chine  was  purchased  by  the  government  for  $30,000. 
Everywhere  air-ship  flights  are  being  made  success 
fully,  and  it  is  only  a  question  of  time  until  the  aero 
plane  becomes  a  common  means  of  conveyance. 
Wilbur  Wright  declares  that  it  is  already  safer  than 
the  automobile,  and  it  would  seem  that  there  is  in 
store  for  man  a  new  and  exquisite  sensation,  that  of 
flight. 

Surely,  America  has  cause  to  be  proud  of  her  in 
ventors  ! 

SUMMARY 

FULTON,  EGBERT.  Born  at  Little  Britain,  Pennsyl 
vania,  1765;  went  to  London,  1786,  to  study  painting 
under  Benjamin  West;  abandoned  painting,  1793;  re 
turned  to  America,  1806;  first  successful  trip  in  steam 
boat,  the  Clermont,  August  11,  1807;  died  at  New  York 
City,  February  24,  1815. 

WHITNEY,  ELI.  Born  at  Westborough,  Massachu 
setts,  December  8,  1765;  graduated  at  Yale,  1792;  went 
to  Georgia  as  teacher  and  invented  cotton-gin,  1792- 
93 ;  died  at  New  Haven,  Connecticut,  January  8,  1825. 

371 


A  Guide  to  Biography 

MORSE,  SAMUEL  FINLEY  BREESE.  Born  at  Charles- 
town,  Massachusetts,,  April  27,  1791;  graduated  at 
Yale,  1810;  studied  art  under  Benjamin  West  in  Lon 
don,  and  opened  studio  in  New  York  City,  1823;  first 
president  National  Academy  of  Design,  1826-42;  de 
signed  electric  telegraph,  1832;  applied  for  patent, 
1837;  first  line  completed  between  Baltimore  and  Wash 
ington,  1844;  died  at  New  York  City,  April  2,  1872. 

GOODYEAR,  CHARLES.  Born  at  New  Haven,  Connec 
ticut,  December  29,  1800 ;  began  experiments  with  rub 
ber,  1834;  secured  patent,  1844;  died  at  New  York  City, 
July  1,  1860. 

ERICSSON,  JOHN".  Born  in  parish  of  Fernebo,  \Yerm- 
land,  Sweden,  July  31,  1803 ;  went  to  England,  1826 ; 
came  to  America,  1839;  constructed  caloric  engine, 
1833;  applied  screw  to  steam  navigation,  1836-41;  in 
vented  turreted  ironclad  Monitor,  1862;  died  at  New 
York  City,  March  8,  1889. 

DAHLGREN,  JOHN  ADOLPH.  Born  at  Philadelphia, 
November  13,  1809;  lieutenant  in  navy,  1837;  assigned 
to  ordnance  duty  at  Washington,  1847;  commander, 
1855;  rear-admiral,  1863;  took  important  part  in  naval 
•operations  during  Civil  War;  died  at  Washington,  July 
12,  1870. 

McCoRMiCK,  CYRUS  HALL.  Born  at  Walnut  Grove, 
West  Virginia,  February  15,  1809;  invented  mechanical 
reaper,  1831 ;  died  at  Chicago,  May  13,  1884. 

HOWE,  ELIAS.  Born  at  Spencer,  Massachusetts,  July 
9,  1819;  invented  sewing-machine,  1844;  died  at  Brook 
lyn,  New  York,  October  3,  1867. 

372 


Inventors 

CORLISS,  GEORGE  HENRY.  Born  at  Easton,  New 
York,  July  2,  1817;  invented  Corliss  engine,  1849;  died 
at  Providence,  Rhode  Island,  February  21,  1888. 

SHOLES,  CHRISTOPHER  LATHAM.  Born  at  Moores- 
burg,  Pennsylvania,  February  14,  1819;  state  senator, 
Wisconsin,  1848,  1856-58;  held  many  positions  of  trust 
in  Milwaukee,  1869-78;  patented  typewriter,  1868. 

BELL,  ALEXANDER  GRAHAM.  Born  at  Edinburgh, 
Scotland,  March  3,  1847;  came  to  Canada,  1870,  and 
to  Boston,  1871;  invented  telephone,  1876;  grapho- 
phone,  1883. 

BRUSH,  CHARLES  FRANCIS.  Born  at  Euclid,  Ohio, 
March  17,  1849;  graduated  University  of  Michigan, 
1869;  invented  modern  arc  electric  lighting;  founder 
Brush  Electric  Company. 

WESTINGHOUSE,  GEORGE.  Born  at  Central  Bridge, 
Schoharie  County,  New  York,  October  6,  1846;  in 
vented  rotary  engine  at  age  of  fifteen;  in  Union  army,. 
1863-64;  invented  air  brake,  1868;  also  inventions  in 
railway  signals,  steam  and  gas  engines,  turbines,  and 
electric  machinery. 

EDISON,  THOMAS  ALVA.  Born  at  Milan,  Ohio,  Feb 
ruary  11,  1847;  established  workshop  at  Menlo  Park,, 
New  Jersey,  1876 ;  invented  megaphone,  phonograph, 
aerophone,  incandescent  electric  lamp,  kinetoscope,  and 
many  other  things. 

WRIGHT,  ORVILLE.    Born  at  Dayton,  Ohio,  1871, 
WRIGHT,  WILBUR.     Born  at  Dayton,  Ohio,  1869, 


373 


INDEX 


Abbey,  Edwin  A.,  117,  124. 
Adams,  Edwin,  179. 
Adams,  Herbert,  153. 
Addams,  Jane,  223-224,  230. 
Agassiz,  Alexander,  192,  225. 
Agassiz,  Louis,   186-192,  193, 

201-202,  209-210,  211,  213, 

224. 
Alcott,  Amos  Bronson,  41-43, 

52. 

Alcott,  Louisa  May,  42-43,  52. 
Aldrich,   Thomas  Bailey,   75- 

76,  82-83,  163. 
Alexander,    Francis,    102-103, 

121. 

Alexander,  John  W.,  119. 
Allen,  James  Lane,  33. 
Allston,  Washington,   97,  99, 

121,   126. 
Anderson,      Charles      Joseph, 

174. 
Anderson,      Mary,      174-175, 

183. 

Andrew,  John  A.,  266. 
Anthony,   Susan  B.,   271-272, 

289. 

Arnold,  Benedict,  95. 
Astor,    John   Jacob,   294-297, 

324. 

Astor,  William  B.,  296-297. 
Atwood,  Elizabeth,  303. 


Audubon,   John   James,    186- 

190,  224. 
Austin,  James  T.,  270. 


Bailey,  Liberty  Hyde,  212. 
Ball,   Thomas,    136,    137-13&, 

155. 

Bancroft,  George,  34-36,  51. 
Barker,  George  Frederick,  212. 
Barlow,  Joel,  329. 
Barnard,    George    Gray,    153, 

156. 
Barnum,  Phineas  Taylor,  302- 

305,  314,  325. 
Barrett,    Lawrence,    171-172, 

176,  183. 

Bartlett,  Paul  Wayland,  153. 
Barton,  Clara,  277-278,  289. 
Beecher,  Henry  Ward,  252, 

254,  281,  287. 
Beecher,  Lyman,  31,  252-254, 

269,  287* 
Bell,  Alexander  Graham,  328, 

356-358,  373. 

Bell,  Alexander  Melville,  357. 
Belmont,  August,  323. 
Benjamin,  Park,  74. 
Bennett,    James    Gordon,    47, 

309. 
Bergh,  Henry,  278-280,  290. 


375 


Index 


Bessey,  Charles  Edward,  212. 
Bickmore,  Albert  Smith,  193. 
Bierstadt,  Albert,  108,  122. 
Boone,  Daniel,  100. 
Booth,  Edwin,   118,   157,   158, 

160-164,  166,  168,  169,  171, 

172,  173,  176,  182,  183. 
Booth,  John  Wilkes,  161. 
Booth,  Junius  Brutus,  158- 

162,  177,  182. 
Boyle,  John  J.,  153. 
Brooks,      Phillips,      281-282, 

290. 
Brown,     Henry     Kirke,     113, 

132-133,  145,  146,  154,  155. 
Brown,    John,    262,    272-276, 

289. 

Brown,  Nathan,  313. 
Brush,    Charles    F.,    358-359, 

373. 

Brush,  George  de  Forest,  119. 
Bryant,   William   Cullen,   55- 

58,  80. 

Bundy,  Benjamin,  264. 
Burke,  Chartes,  179. 
Burr,  Aaron,  97,  98. 
Burr,  Theodosia,  97. 
Burroughs,  John,  211-212. 

Cable,  George  Washington,  33. 
Caffin,  Charles  C.,  17. 
Calhoun,   John   C.,    130,    134, 

135. 

Campbell,  Archibald,  257. 
Carnegie,     Andrew,     246-251, 

287. 

Cary,  Alice,  76. 
Cary,  Phoebe,  76. 
Chamberlain,  Thomas  C.,  204. 
Channing,     William     Ellery, 


254-256,  259,  260,  262,  270, 

288. 
Child,  Lydia  Maria,'  261-262, 

288. 
Church,  Frederick  Edwin,  107- 

108,  122. 

Clapp,  Henry  Austin,  18. 
Clark,  Alonzo  Howard,  193. 
Clay,  Henry,  265. 
Clemens,    Samuel   Langhorne, 

32-33,  50-51. 
Clemm,  Virginia,  68,  81. 
Coffin,  Thomas,  257. 
Cole,   Thomas,    105-107,    108, 

122. 
Cooper,  James  Fenimore,  24- 

27,  31,  50,  85,  127. 
Cooper,  Astley,  205. 
Cooper,   Peter,    235-237,   242, 

286,  307. 
Cope,   Edward   Drinker,   200- 

201,  226. 
Copley,    John    Singleton,    86- 

87,  94,  120. 
Corliss,    George    Henry,    352- 

353,  373. 
Cornell,    Ezra,    239-241,    242, 

286. 
Crawford,    Thomas,    131-132, 

154. 
Curtis,    George    William,    46, 

53. 
Cushman,  Charlotte,  144,  157, 

166-168,  172,  182. 
Cushman,  Susan,  168. 

Dahlgren,  John  Adolph,  347- 

348,  372. 
Daly,  Augustin,  172,  176,  177, 

183,  184. 


376 


Index 


Dana,  Charles  Anderson,  47. 
Dana,    James    Dwight,    202- 

203,  226-227. 
Davenport,    E.    L.,     176-177, 

184. 

Davenport,  Fanny,  177,  184. 
Day,  Jeremiah,  218. 
Dix,    Dorothea    Lynde,    259- 

261,  288. 

Douglass,  Frederick,  273,  275. 
Drake,  E.  L.,  355-356. 
Drake,  Joseph  Rodman,  56. 
Draper,  Henry,  195,  199. 
Draper,   John   William,    194- 

195,  225. 

Drew,  John,  176,  184. 
Drew,  Mrs.  John,  184. 
Durand,  Asher  Brown,  104- 

105,  107,  108,  122. 
Dwight,    Timothy,    218,    219, 

229. 


Edison,  Thomas  A.,  328,  361- 

367,  373. 
Edwards,  Jonathan,  219-221, 

223,  229. 
Eliot,  Charles  William,  215- 

218,  229. 

Elwell,  Frank,  153. 
Emerson,    Ralph    Waldo,    44- 

45,  52,  58-59. 

Ericsson,  John,  344-347,  372. 
Ericsson,  Nils,  344. 
Everett,   Edward,  215. 

Farragut,      David      Glasgow, 

149,  345. 
Field,   Cyrus   West,   307-309, 

325. 


Field,  Eugene,  76,  83. 
Field,  Marshall,  323. 
Fiske,  John,  40. 
Florence,  William  J.,  169-170, 

183. 
Forrest,  Edwin,  157,  158, 164- 

166,  167,  169,  170,  179,  182. 
Fox,  John,  33. 
Franklin,    Benjamin,    89,    94, 

197,  208,  328,  339. 
Freeman,  Mary  Wilkins,  34. 
French,  Daniel  Chester,  150- 

151,  156. 

Freneau,  Philip,  56. 
Fulton,  Robert,  328-332,  345, 

371. 

Garrison,  William  Lloyd,  61, 

261,  262-267,  268,  269,  271, 

288. 

Gilder,  Richard  Watson,  76. 
Girard,  Stephen,  97,  164,  231- 

233,  286. 

Glasgow,  Ellen,  34. 
Goelet,  Robert,  323. 
Goodyear,  Charles,  339-344, 

372. 

Gould,  Edwin,  317. 
Gould,  Frank,  317. 
Gould,  George,  317-318. 
Gould,  Helen  Miller,  312. 
Gould,  Howard,  317. 
Gould,  Jay,  310-312,  317,  325. 
Grant,    Ulysses    S.,    49,    300- 

311. 
Gray,  Asa,  193,  194,  212,  213, 

225. 

Gray,  Elisha,  356. 
Greeley,  Horace,  46-49,  53. 
Greeley,  Zaccheus,  47. 


377 


Index 


Greenough,  Horatio,  90,  125- 

129,  130,  131,  134,  154. 
Guyot,  Arnold,  209,  213,  228. 


Hale,  Nathan,  152. 

Halleck,  Fitz-Greene,  56. 

Hamilton,  Alexander,  293. 

Harding,  Chester,  99-102, 103, 
121,  133. 

Harriman,  E.  H.,  321-324, 
326. 

Harriott,  Frederick  C.,  183. 

Harrison,  William  Henry,  48. 

Harte,  Bret,  33. 

Hartt,  Charles  Frederick,  193. 

Haseltine,  Anne,  256. 

Havemeyer,  Frederick  Chris 
tian,  301. 

Havemeyer,  William  Freder 
ick,  301-302. 

Hawthorne,  Nathaniel,  27-30, 
31,  50,  59,  69,  85,  130,  139, 
144. 

Hawthorne,  William,  28. 

Hayne,  Paul  Hamilton,  30,  77, 
78,  84. 

Henry,  Joseph,  197,  208-209, 
228,  234,  338-339,  356,  367. 

Henry,  Patrick,  132. 

Heth,  Joice,  302-303. 

Hildreth,  Richard,  36. 

Hill,  James  J.,  318-321,  323, 
326. 

Hitchcock,  Edward,  203-204, 
227. 

Holmes,  Oliver  Wendell,  58, 
62-64,  81,  87,  216. 

Homer,  Winslow,  115-116, 
123. 


Hopkins,  Johns,  237,  239,  242, 

286. 

Hopkinson,  Francis,  89. 
Hosmer,      Harriet,      143-144, 

155. 
Howe,    Elias,    328,    350-352, 

372. 

Howe,  Julia  Ward,  76. 
Howe,  Samuel  G.,  260. 
Howells,  William  Dean,  33. 
Hubbard,  Elbert,  79. 
Hunt,    William    Morris,    112, 

113-114,  123. 
Hyatt,  Alpheus,  193. 

Inman,  Henry,  103-104,  121. 
Inness,  George,   108-110,   116, 

122. 
Irving,     Washington,     20-24, 

36,  49-50,  97,  296-297. 
Irving,  William,  20. 
Isham,  Samuel,   17. 

Jackson,    Andrew,    107,    130, 

135-136. 

James,  Henry,  33. 
Jarvis,  John  Wesley,  103,  121. 
Jefferson,     Joseph,     18,     157, 

170,  178-180,  182,  184. 
Jefferson,  Thomas,  98,  132. 
Johnson,  Cave,  135,  337. 
Johnston,  Mary,  34. 
Jordan,  David  Starr,  223. 
Jouett,  Matthew,  103. 
Judson,    Adoniram,    256-257, 

288. 

Kean,  Edmund,  159. 
Keene,  Laura,  179. 
Kellogg,  Vernon  L.,  212. 


378 


Index 


Kensett,   Frederick,   108,   110, 

122. 

Key,  Francis  Scott,  56. 
Kimball,  Edward,  283. 
Jvingsley,  James,  218. 

LaFarge,   John,    17,    112-113, 

123. 
Langley,     Samuel     Pierpont, 

196,  226,  368. 
Lanier,  Sidney,  77-78,  83. 
Le  Conte,  John,  210,  228. 
Le  Conte,  John  Eathan,  210- 

211. 
Le  Conte,  John  Lawrence,  211, 

228. 

Le  Conte,  Joseph,  210,  228. 
Le  Conte,  Lewis,  209-210. 
Lee,  Robert  E.,  276. 
Leidy,  Joseph,  201. 
Leiter,  Levi,  323. 
Leslie,  C.  R.,  117. 
Lincoln,  Abraham,  12,  49,  72, 

138,  146,  149,  160. 
Lind,  Jenny,  138,  302,  305. 
Lindsay,  R.  W.,  302. 
Livingston,  Robert  R.,  330. 
Long,  Crawford  W.,  206,  227. 
Longfellow,       Henry       Wads- 
worth,  15,  28,  54,  58,  59-61, 

80,  85. 

Longworth,  Nicholas,  146. 
Lorillard,  Pierre,  323. 
Lovejoy,  Elijah,  266,  270. 
Lowrell,    James    Russell,    58, 

64-66,   81. 
Lyman,  Theodore,   193. 


Macie,  James.    See  Smithson, 
James. 


McCormick,  Cyrus  Hall,  348- 

350,  372. 

McCosh,  James,  219,  222,  230. 
McCullough,    John,     170-171, 

173,  176,   183. 
Mackay,    John    W.,    309-310, 

325. 

McMaster,  John  Bach,  40. 
MacMonnies,    Frederick,    151- 

152,  156. 
Macready,    William    C.,    165, 

167. 

Macy,  John,  17. 
Mann,  Horace,  213-214,  228- 

229,  260. 

Mansfield,  Richard,  180-181. 
"Mark    Twain."      See    Clem 
ens,  S.  L. 

Marlowe,  Julia,  181. 
Marsh,  Othniel  Charles,   199- 

200,  226. 

Marshall,  John,  130. 
Martin,    Homer    Dodge,    108, 

110-111,  123. 
Maverick,  Peter,  122. 
Meade,    Larkin    G.,    145-147, 

155. 

Merrill,  Addison  Emory.  193. 
Miller,      Cincinnatus      Heine 

(Joaquin),  76. 
Millet,    Francis    B.,    116-117, 

124. 
Mills,    Clarke,    107,    133-136, 

154. 

Milmore,  Martin,  151. 
Modjeska,     Helena,     172-174, 

183. 
Moody,    Dwight   L.,    282-285, 

290. 
Moran,  Thomas,  108,  122. 


379 


Index 


Morgan,    J.    Pierpont,     315- 

316,  326. 

Morgan,  Junius  Spencer,  315. 
Morris,  Clara,  18,  172,  183. 
Morris,  Robert,  292-293,  324. 
Morse,      Edward      Sylvester, 

193. 

Morse,  Jedediah,  335. 
Morse,  Samuel  Finley  Breese, 

99,  240,  328,  335-339,  372. 
Morton,    W.    T.    G.,    206-207, 

227-228. 
Motley,  John  Lothrop,  34,  37- 

38,  40,  51,  216. 
Mott,  James,  257. 
Mott,  Lucretia,  257-259,  261, 

262,  272,  288. 

Mott,  Valentine,  204-206,  227. 
Murdock,  James  E.,  179. 
Murfree,  Mary  Noailles,  33. 
Muspratt,     James     Sheridan, 

168. 

Navarro,  Antonio  de,  183. 
Neagle,  John,  103,  121. 
Neilson,  Adelaide,  176. 
Kewberry,  John  Strong,  203, 

227. 
Newcomb,     Simon,     197-198, 

226. 
Nilhaus,  Charles,  153. 

Ogden,  Francis  B.,  345. 
Orton,  William,  338. 
Osborne,  H.  F.,  201. 
Ossoli,   Margaret   Fuller,   43- 
44,  52. 


Packard,  Alpheus  Spring,  193. 
Page,  Thomas  Nelson,  34. 


Palfrey,  John  Gorham,  36. 
Palmer,  Erasmus  D.,  136-137, 

139,  154. 

Parker,  John,  267. 
Parker,     Theodore,     267-268,. 

269,  288. 
Parkman,  Francis,  34,  39-40, 

51. 
Peabody,      George,      237-239, 

242,  286,  315. 
Peale,    Charles    Willson,    90- 

92,  98,  120,  304. 
Peale,    Rembrandt,    98,     121, 

304. 

Pelham,  Peter,  86. 
Penn,  William,  140. 
Phillips,  John,  269. 
Phillips,    Wendell,    262,    268- 

271,  289. 
Pickering,     Edward     Charles, 

198-199,  226. 
Pierce,  Franklin,  29. 
Plant,  Henry,  147. 
Poe,  Edgar  Allan,  17,  27,  28, 

55,  58,  66-70,  76,  81-82,  85. 
Porter,  Noah,  218-219,  229. 
Powers,  Hiram,  129-131,  154. 
Pratt,  Zadock,  310. 
Pray,  Malvina,  169. 
Prescott,    William    Hickling, 

34,  36-38,  40,  51. 
Putnam,  Frederick  Ward,  193. 

Quincy,  Josiah,  215,  217,  229. 

Rehan,     Ada,     172,     175-176, 

183. 

Remsen,  Ira,  222. 
Rhodes,  James  Ford,  40. 
Rider,  Emory,  343. 


380 


Index 


Eider,  Williams,  343. 

Riley,    James    Whitcomb,    76, 

83. 
Rinehart,    William    H.,    141- 

142,    155. 

Roberts,  Marshall,   307. 
Robinson,  Marius,  266. 
Rockefeller,      John     Davison, 

243-246,  287,  354. 
Rogers,  John,  142-143,  155. 
Rogers,     Randolph,     140-141, 

155. 

Ruckstuhl,  Frederick,  153. 
Rutherford,      Lewis      Morris, 
,      195-196,  225. 

Sage,  Russell,  305-306,  325. 
Sage,  Mrs.  Russell,  252,  306. 
Saint      Gaudens,      Augustus, 
|      148-150,  152,  156. 
Salisbury,  Rollin  D.,  204. 
Sanders,  Sarah,  20. 
Sankey,  Ira  D.,  284,  285. 
Sargent,    John    Singer,    117- 

119,  124,  163. 

Schurman,  Jacob  Gould,  223. 
Scott,  Thomas  A.,  249. 
Scudder,     Samuel     Hubbard, 

193. 

Seward,  William  H.,  348. 
Shaler,   Nathaniel  Southgate, 

193,  211,  228. 
Shaw,  Robert  Gould,  150. 
Sholes,    C.   Latham,    353-354, 

373. 
Silliman,  Benjamin,  202-203- 

204,  213,  218,  226,  227,  354. 
Simms,  William  Gilmore,  30- 

31,  78-79,  84. 
Skinner,  Otis,  181. 


Slater,    John    Fox,    241-242, 

287. 

Sloane,  William  Milligan,  40. 
Slocum,  Margaret  Olivia.   See 

Sage,  Mrs.  Russell. 
Smithson,      James,     233-234, 

286. 
Sothern,  Edward  A.,  179,  181, 

185. 

Sothern,  E.  H.,  181,  185. 
Sparks,  Jared,  36,  255. 
Stanford,  Jane  Lathrop,  243. 
Stanford,     Leland,     242-243, 

287. 
Stanton,  Elizabeth  Cady,  258, 

272,  289. 
Stedman,    Edmund    Clarence, 

75-76,  82. 
Stewart,  A.  T.,  299-301,  307, 

312,  324. 

Stimpson,  William,  193. 
Stockton,  Frank  R.,  34. 
Stockton,  Robert  F.,  345. 
Stoddart,  J.  H.,  18. 
Story,  Joseph,  139,  140. 
Story,  William  Wetmore,  139- 

140,  155. 
Stowe,   Harriet   Beecher,   31- 

32,  50,  254,  262. 
Stratton,     Charles     S.       See 

"  Thumb,  Tom." 
Stuart,     Gilbert,     90,     92-94, 

102,  103,  120. 
Stuart,  J.  E.  B.,  276. 
Sully,  Thomas,  90,  96-97,  121. 
Sumner,  Charles,  132,  260. 

Taft,  Lor  ado,   17. 
Tappan,  Arthur,  265. 
Taylor,  Bayard,  73-75,  82. 


381 


Index 


Taylor,  Moses,  307. 
Tenney,  Sanborn,  193. 
Thomson,  William,  357. 
Thoreau,  Henry  David,  45-46, 

52-53. 

Thumb,  Tom,  302,  304-305. 
Timrod,  Henry,  30,  77,  78,  83. 
Torrey,  John,  193-194,  225. 
Townsend,  James  M.,  354-356. 
Trent,  W.  P.,  16. 
Trumbull,  Jonathan,  94. 
Trumbull,    John,    90,    94-96, 

104,  120. 
Tryon,  Dwight  William,  116, 

124. 
Tucker,  George,  36. 

Vanderbilt,     Cornelius,     297- 

299,  311,  317,  324. 
Vanderbilt,    William    Henry, 

298-299,  317. 

Vanderlyn,  John,  97-98,  121. 
Van  Dyke,  John  C.,  17. 
Vedder,  Elihu,  111-112,  123. 
Vining,  Fanny  Elizabeth,  177, 

184. 

Wanamaker,    John,    312-315, 

323,  325. 

Ward,  Henry  Augustus,  193. 
Ward,  J.  Q.  A.,  144-145,  150, 

155. 
Warner,   Olin   Levi,    147-148, 

156. 

Warren,  J.  C.,  207. 
Warren,  Lavinia,  304-305. 
Warren,     William,     177-178- 

179-184. 

Washington,  Augustine,  303. 
Washington,    George,    12,    23, 


90,  91,  93,  94,  127,  128,  130, 

132,  133,  134,  138,  293,  302, 

303. 

Webster,  Daniel,  130,  135. 
West,    Benjamin,    87-90,    91, 

92,  94,  95,  96,  97,  99,  120, 

121,   151,  329. 
Westinghouse,    George,     359- 

361,  373. 

Wharton,  Edith,  34. 
WThistler,   James   Abbott  Mc- 

Neill,  114-115,  123. 
White,  Chandler,  307. 
White,  Stewart  Edward,  34. 
White,  William,  89. 
Whitman,  Marcus,  295. 
Whitman,  Walt,  70-73,  82,  85. 
Whitney,    Eli,    328,    332-335, 

339,  371. 
Whitney,  Josiah  Dwight,  203, 

227. 

Whitney,  William  C.,  323. 
Whittier,  John  Greenleaf,  54, 

58,  61-62,  80-81,  263,  265. 
Wilder,  Burt  Green,  193. 
Wilkes,  Charles,  202. 
Willing,  Charles,  292. 
Wilson,  Woodrow,  40,  223. 
Winsor,  Justin,  40. 
Winter,  William,  17,  18,  162. 
Winthrop,  John,  28. 
Witherspoon,  John,  219,  221- 

222,  230. 

Wright,  Orville,  368-371,  373. 
Wright,  Wilbur,  368-371,  373. 
Wyant,  Alexander,   108,    110, 
123. 


Young,  Charles  Augustus,  196, 
225. 


382 


THE  COUNTRY  LIFE  PRESS 
GARDEN  CITY,  N.  Y. 


